LINDA  CONDON 


THE  WORKS  OF 
JOSEPH  HERGESHEIMER 

THE  LAY  ANTHONY 

MOUNTAIN   BLOOD 

THE  THREE  BLACK  PENNYS 

GOLD  AND   IRON 

JAVA   HEAD 

THE   HAPPY  END 

LINDA  CONDON 


LINDA  CONDON 


BY 
JOSEPH  HERGESHEIMER 


NEW  YORK 
ALFRED 'A' KNOPF 

1919 


COPYRIGHT,  1919,  BY 
ALFRED  A.  KNOPF,  INC. 


PRINTED    IN    THB    UNITKD    STATKS    OF    AMKRICA 


To 
CARL  FAN  FECHTEN 

This, 

Linda  Condon's 

Gravest 

Bow. 


2  ... 


LINDA  CONDON 


A  BLACK  bang  was,  but  not  ultimately, 
the  most  notable  feature  of  her  uncom 
mon  personality — straight  and  severe 
and  dense  across  her  clear  pale  brow  and  eyes. 
Her  eyes  were  the  last  thing  to  remember  and 
wonder  about;  in  shade  blue,  they  had  a  velvet 
richness,  a  poignant  intensity  of  lovely  color,  that 
surprised  the  heart.  Aside  from  that  she  was 
slim,  perhaps  ten  years  old,  and  graver  than  gay. 
Her  mother  was  gay  for  them  both,  and,  there 
fore,  for  the  entire  family.  No  father  was  in  evi 
dence;  he  was  dead  and  never  spoken  of,  and 
Linda  was  the  only  child.  Linda's  dresses,  those 
significant  trivialities,  plainly  showed  two  tend 
encies — the  gaiety  of  her  mother  and  her  own  al 
ways  formal  gravity.  If  Linda  appeared  at  din 
ner,  in  the  massive  Renaissance  materialism  of  the 
hotel  dining-room,  with  a  preposterous  magenta 
hair-ribbon  on  her  shapely  head,  her  mother  had 
succeeded  in  expressing  her  sense  of  the  appro 
priately  decorative;  while  if  Linda  wore  an  unor- 

[9] 


LINDA    CONDON 

namented  but  equally  "unsuitable"  frock  of  dark 
velvet,  she,  in  her  turn,  had  been  vindicated. 

Again,  but  far  more  rarely,  the  child's  selec 
tion  was  evident  on  the  woman.  As  a  rule  Mrs. 
Condon  garbed  her  flamboyant  body  in  large  and 
expensive  patterns  or  extremely  tailored  suits; 
and  of  the  two,  the  evening  satins  and  powdered 
arms  barely  retaining  an  admissible  line,  and  the 
suits,  the  latter  were  the  most,  well — spectacular. 

She  was  not  dark  in  color  but  brightly  golden; 
a  gold,  it  must  be  said  in  all  honesty,  her  own,  a 
metallic  gold  crisply  and  solidly  marcelled;  with 
hazel-brown  eyes,  and  a  mouth  which,  set  against 
her  daughter's  deep-blue  gaze,  was  her  particular 
attraction.  It  was  rouged  to  a  nicety,  the  under 
lip  a  little  full  and  never  quite  against  the  upper. 
If  Linda's  effect  was  cool  and  remote,  Mrs.  Con 
don,  thanks  to  her  mouth,  was  reassuringly  im 
minent.  She  was,  too,  friendly;  she  talked  to 
women — in  her  not  overfrequent  opportunities — 
in  a  rapid  warm  inaccurate  confession  of  almost 
everything  they  desired  to  hear.  The  women,  of 
course,  were  continually  hampered  by  the  unfor 
tunate  fact  that  the  questions  nearest  their  hearts, 
or  curiosity,  were  entirely  inadmissible. 

Viewed  objectively,  they  all,  with  the  exception 
[10] 


LINDA   CONDON 

of  Linda,  seemed  alike ;  but  that  might  have  been 
due  to  their  common  impressive  setting.  The 
Boscombe,  in  its  way,  was  as  lavish  as  Mrs.  Con 
don's  dresses.  The  main  place  of  congregation, 
for  instance,  was  a  great  space  of  white  marble 
columns,  Turkey-red  carpet  and  growing  palms. 
It  was  lighted  at  night  indirectly  by  alabaster 
bowls  hanging  on  gilded  chains — a  soft  bright 
flood  of  radiance  falling  on  the  seated  or  slowly 
promenading  women  with  bare  shoulders. 

Usually  they  were  going  with  a  restrained 
sharp  eagerness  toward  the  dining-room  or  leav 
ing  it  in  a  more  languid  flushed  repletion.  There 
were,  among  them,  men;  but  somehow  the  men 
never  seemed  to  be  of  the  least  account.  It  was 
a  women's  paradise.  The  glow  from  above  al 
ways  emphasized  the  gowns,  the  gowns  like  or 
chids  and  tea-roses  and  the  leaves  of  magnolias. 
It  sparkled  in  the  red  and  green  and  crystal  jewels 
like  exotic  dew  scattered  over  the  exotic  human 
flowers.  Very  occasionally  there  was  a  compla 
cent  or  irritable  masculine  utterance,  and  then  it 
was  immediately  lost  in  the  dominant  feminine 
sibilance. 

Other  children  than  Linda  sped  in  the  manner 
of  brilliant  fretful  tops  literally  on  the  elaborate 


LINDA    CONDON 

outskirts  of  the  throng ;  but  they  were  as  different 
from  her  as  she  was  from  the  elders.  Indeed 
Linda  resembled  the  latter,  rather  than  her  proper 
age,  remarkably.  She  had  an  air  of  responsibil 
ity,  sometimes  expressed  in  a  troubled  frown,  and 
again  by  the  way  she  hurried  sedately  through 
drifting  figures  toward  a  definite  purpose  and 
end. 

Usually  it  was  in  the  service  of  one  of  her 
mother's  small  innumerable  requests  or  neces 
sities;  if  the  latter  were  sitting  with  a  gentleman 
on  the  open  hotel  promenade  that  overlooked  the 
sea  and  needed  a  heavier  wrap,  Linda  returned 
immediately  with  a  furred  cloak  on  her  arm;  if 
the  elder,  going  out  after  dinner,  had  brought 
down  the  wrong  gloves,  Linda  knew  the  exact 
wanted  pair  in  the  long  perfumed  box;  while 
countless  trifles  were  needed  from  the  convenient 
drug-store. 

The  latter  was  a  place  of  white  mosaic  floor 
and  glittering  glass,  with  a  marble  counter 
heaped  with  vivid  fruit  and  silver-covered  bowls 
of  sirups  and  creams  with  chopped  nuts.  Linda 
often  found  time  to  stop  here  for  a  delectable  glass 
of  assorted  sweet  compounds.  She  was  on  terms 
of  intimacy  with  the  colored  man  in  a  crisp  linen 

[12] 


LINDA    CONDON 

coat  who  presided  over  the  refreshments,  and  he 
invariably  gave  her  an  extra  spoonful  of  the 
marron  paste  she  preferred.  When  at  lunch,  it 
might  be,  she  cared  for  very  little,  her  mother 
would  complain  absently: 

"You  must  stop  eating  those  sickening  mix 
tures.  They'd  ruin  any  skin."  At  this  she  in 
variably  found  the  diminutive  mirror  in  the  bag  on 
her  lap  and  glanced  at  her  own  slightly  improved 
color.  The  burden  of  the  feminine  conversa 
tions  in  which  Mrs.  Condon  was  privileged  to 
join,  Linda  discovered,  was  directed  toward  these 
overwhelming  considerations  of  appearance. 
And  their  importance,  communicated  to  her,  re 
sulted  in  a  struggle  between  the  desire  to  preserve 
her  skin  from  ruin  and  the  seductions  of  marron 
paste  and  maple  chocolates. 

Now,  with  an  uncomfortable  sense  of  impend 
ing  disaster,  she  would  hastily  consume  one  or  the 
other;  again,  supported  by  a  beginning  self-im 
posed  inflexibility,  she  would  turn  steadily  away 
from  temptation.  In  the  end  the  latter  tri 
umphed;  and  her  normal  appetite,  always  mod 
erate,  was  unimpaired. 

This  spirit  of  resolution,  it  sometimes  hap 
pened,  was  a  cause  of  humorous  dismay  to  her 

[13] 


LINDA   CONDON 

mother.  "I  declare,  Linda,"  she  would  observe 
with  an  air  of  helplessness,  "you  make  me  feel 
like  the  giddy  one  and  as  if  you  were  mama.  It's 
the  way  you  look,  so  disapproving.  I  have  to 
remind  myself  you're  only — just  how  old  are 
you?  I  keep  forgetting."  Linda  would  inform 
her  exactly  and  the  other  sigh: 

"The  years  slip  around  disgustingly.  It  seems 
only  yesterday  I  was  at  my  first  party."  Usually, 
in  spite  of  Linda's  eagerness  to  hear  of  that  time 
when  her  mother  was  a  girl,  the  elder  would 
stop  abruptly.  On  rare  occasions  solitary  facts 
emerged  from  the  recalled  existence  of  a  small 
town  in  the  country.  There  were  such  details  as 
buggy-riding  and  prayer-meetings  and  excursions 
to  a  Boiling  Springs  where  the  dancing-floor,  open 
among  the  trees,  was  splendid.  At  these  mem 
ories  Mrs.  Condon  had  been  known  to  cry. 

But  she  would  recover  shortly.  Her  emotions 
were  like  that — easily  roused,  highly  colored  and 
soon  forgotten.  She  forgot,  Linda  realized  len 
iently,  a  great  deal.  It  wasn't  safe  to  rely  on  her 
promises.  However,  if  she  neglected  a  partic 
ular  desire  of  Linda's,  she  continually  brought 
back  unexpected  gifts  of  candy,  boxes  of  silk 
stockings,  or  lovely  half-wilted  flowers. 

[14] 


LINDA    CONDON 

The  flowers,  they  discovered,  although  they 
stayed  fresh  for  a  long  while  pinned  to  Linda's 
slim  waist,  died  almost  at  once  if  worn  by  her 
mother.  "It's  my  warm  nature,  I  am  certain," 
the  latter  proclaimed  to  her  daughter;  "while  you 
are  a  little  refrigerator.  I  must  say  it's  wonder 
ful  how  you  keep  your  clothes  the  same.  Neat  as 
a  pin."  Somehow,  with  this  commendation,  she 
managed  to  include  a  slight  uncomplimentary  im 
patience.  Linda  didn't  specially  want  to  resem 
ble  a  pin,  a  disagreeable  object  with  a  sharp  point. 
She  considered  this  in  the  long  periods  when, 
partly  by  preference,  she  was  alone. 

Seated,  perhaps,  in  the  elaborate  marble  and 
deep  red  of  the  Boscombe's  reception-rooms,  iso 
lated  in  the  brilliant  expensive  throng,  she  would 
speculate  over  what  passed  in  the  light  of  her 
own  special  problems.  But  nothing,  really,  came 
out  to  her  satisfaction.  There  was,  notably,  no 
one  she  might  ask.  Her  mother,  approached  se 
riously,  declared  that  Linda  gave  her  the  creeps; 
while  others  made  it  plain  that  it  was  their  duty 
to  repress  the  forwardness  inevitable  from  the 
scandalous  neglect  of  her  upbringing. 

They,  the  women  of  the  Boscombe,  glancing 
at  their  finger-nails  stained  and  buffed  to  a  shin- 

[15] 


LINDA   CONDON 

ing  pale  vermilion,  lightly  rubbing  their  rings  on 
the  dry  palm  of  a  hand,  wondered  pessimistically 
within  Linda's  hearing  what  could  come  out  of 
such  an  association.  That  term,  she  vaguely 
gathered,  referred  to  her  mother.  The  latter  evi 
dently  interested  them  tremendously;  because,  she 
explained,  they  had  no  affairs  of  their  own  to  at 
tend  to.  This  was  perfectly  clear  to  Linda  until 
Mrs.  Condon  further  characterized  them  as 
"busy." 

The  women,  stopped  by  conventions  from 
really  satisfactory  investigation  at  the  source, 
drew  her  on  occasion  into  a  laboriously  light  in 
quisition.  How  long  would  Linda  and  her  mama 
stay  at  the  Boscombe?  Had  they  closed  their 
apartment?  Where  was  it?  Hadn't  Mrs.  Con 
don  mentioned  Cleveland?  Wasn't  Linda  lonely 
with  her  mama  out  so  much — they  even  said  late 
— in  rolling  chairs?  Had  she  ever  seen  Mr.  Jas 
per  before  his  arrival  last  week? 

No,  of  course  she  hadn't. 

Here  they  exchanged  skeptical  glances  beneath 
relentlessly  pulled  eyebrows.  He  was  really  very 
nice,  Mr.  Jasper.  Linda  in  a  matter-of-fact  voice 
replied  that  he  had  given  her  a  twenty-dollar  gold 
piece.  Mr.  Jasper  was  very  generous.  But  per- 

[16] 


LINDA   CONDON 

haps  he  had  rewarded  her  for  being  a  good  little 
girl  and  not — not  bothering  or  hanging  about. 
"Why  should  he?'7  was  Linda's  just  perceptibly 
impatient  response.  Then  they  told  her  to  be 
quiet  because  they  wanted  to  listen  to  the  music. 

This  consisted  in  studying,  through  suspended 
glasses  in  chased  platinum,  a  discreet  programme. 
At  the  end  of  a  selection  they  either  applauded 
condescendingly  or  told  each  other  that  they 
hadn't  cared  for  that  last — really  too  peculiar. 
Whichever  happened,  the  leader  of  the  small  or 
chestra,  an  extravagant  Italian  with  a  supple 
waist,  turned  and  bowed  repeatedly  with  a  grim 
acing  smile.  The  music,  usually  Viennese,  was 
muted  and  emotional;  its  strains  blended  per 
fectly  with  the  floating  scents  of  the  women  and 
the  faintly  perceptible  pungent  odors  of  dinner. 
Every  little  while  a  specially  insinuating  melody 
became,  apparently,  tangled  in  the  women's 
breathing,  and  their  breasts,  cunningly  traced  and 
caressed  in  tulle,  would  be  disturbed. 

Mrs.  Condon  applauded  more  vigorously 
than  was  sanctioned  by  the  others'  necessity  for 
elegance;  the  frank  clapping  of  her  pink  palms 
never  failed  to  betray  a  battery  of  affected  and 
significant  surprise  in  eyes  like-  polished  cold 

[17] 


LINDA   CONDON 

agates.  Linda,  seated  beside  her  parent,  could 
be  seen  to  lay  a  hand,  narrow  and  blanched  and 
marked  by  an  emerald,  on  the  elder's  knee.  Her 
pale  fine  lips  moved  rapidly  with  the  shadow  of 
trouble  beneath  the  intense  black  bang. 

"I  wish  you  wouldn't  do  it  so  loudly,  mother," 
was  what  she  whispered. 


[18] 


II 

THE  jealously  guarded  truth  was  that,  by 
her  daughter  at  least,  Mrs.  Condon  was 
adored.  Linda  observed  that  she  was  not 
like  an  ordinary  mother,  but  more  nearly  resem 
bled  a  youthful  companion.  Mrs.  Condon's 
gaiety  was  as  genuine  as  her  fair  hair.  Not  kept 
for  formal  occasion,  it  got  out  of  bed  with  her, 
remained  through  the  considerable  difficulties  of 
dressing  with  no  maid  but  Linda,  and  if  the  other 
were  not  asleep  called  a  cheerful  or  funny  good 
night. 

Their  rooms  were  separated  by  a  bath,  but 
Linda  was  scarcely  ever  in  her  own — her  moth 
er's  lovely  things,  acting  like  a  magnet,  con 
stantly  drew  her  to  their  arrangement  in  the 
drawers.  When  the  laundry  came  up,  crisp  and 
fragile  webs  heaped  on  the  bed,  Linda  laid  it 
away  in  a  sort  of  ritual.  Even  with  these  pub 
licly  invisible  garments  a  difference  of  choice  ex 
isted  between  the  two:  Mrs.  Condon's  preference 
was  for  insertions,  and  Linda's  for  shadow  em 
broidery  and  fine  shell  edges.  Mrs.  Condon, 

[19] 


LINDA    CONDON 

shaking  into  position  a  foam  of  ribbon  and  lace, 
would  say  with  her  gurgle  of  amusement,  "I  want 
to  be  ready  when  I  fall  down;  if  I  followed  your 
advice  they'd  take  me  for  a  nun." 

This  brought  out  Linda's  low  clear  laugh,  the 
expression  of  her  extreme  happiness.  It  sounded, 
for  an  instant,  like  a  chime  of  small  silver  bells; 
then  died  away,  leaving  the  faintest  perceptible 
flush  on  her  healthy  pallor.  At  other  times  her 
mother's  humor  made  her  vaguely  uncomfortable, 
usually  after  wine  or  other  drinks  that  left  the 
elder's  breath  thick  and  oppressive.  Linda  failed 
completely  to  grasp  the  allusions  of  this  wit  but 
a  sharp  uneasiness  always  responded  like  the 
lingering  stale  memory  of  a  bad  dream. 

Once,  at  the  Boscombe,  her  mother  had  been 
too  silly  for  words :  she  had  giggled  and  embraced 
her  sweet  little  girl,  torn  an  expensive  veil  to 
shreds  and  dropped  a  French  model  hat  into  the 
tub.  After  a  distressing  sickness  she  had  gone 
to  sleep  fully  dressed,  and  Linda,  unable  to  move 
or  wake  her,  had  sat  long  beyond  dinner  into 
the  night,  fearful  of  the  entrance  of  the  chamber 
maid. 

The  next  day  Mrs.  Condon  had  been  humble 
with  remorse.  Men,  she  said,  were  too  beastly 

[20] 


LINDA   CONDON 

for  description.  This  was  not  an  unusual  opin 
ion.  Linda  observed  that  she  was  always  con 
demning  men  in  general  and  dressing  for  them 
in  particular.  She  offered  Linda  endless  advice 
in  an  abstracted  manner: 

"They're  all  liars,  Lin,  and  stingy  about 
everything  but  their  pleasure.  Women  are  dif 
ferent  but  men  are  all  alike.  You  get  sick  to 
death  of  them!  Never  bother  them  when  they 
are  smoking  a  cigar;  cigarettes  don't  matter. 
Leave  the  cigarette-smokers  alone,  anyhow; 
they're  not  as  dependable  as  the  others.  A  man 
with  a  good  cigar — you  must  know  the  good  from 
the  bad — is  usually  discreet.  I  ought  to  bring 
you  up  different,  but,  Lord,  life's  too  short.  Be 
sides,  you  will  learn  more  useful  things  right  with 
mama,  whose  eyes  are  open,  than  anywhere  else. 

"Powder  my  back,  darling;  I  can't  reach.  If 
I'm  a  little  late  to-night  go  to  sleep  like  a  duck. 
You  think  Mr.  Jasper's  nice,  don't  you?  So  does 
mother.  But  you  mustn't  let  him  give  you  any 
more  money.  It'll  make  him  conceited." 

Linda  wondered  what  she  meant  by  the  last 
phrase.  How  could  it  make  Mr.  Jasper  con 
ceited  to  give  her  a  gold  piece?  However,  she  de 
cided  that  she  had  better  not  ask. 

[21] 


LINDA    CONDON 

It  was  like  that  with  a  great  many  of  her 
mother's  mysterious  remarks — Linda  had  an  in 
stinctive  feeling  of  drawing  away.  The  other 
kissed  her  warmly  and  left  a  print  of  vivid  red 
on  her  cheek. 

She  examined  the  mark  in  the  mirror  when  her 
mother  had  gone;  it  was,  she  decided,  the  kiss 
made  visible.  Then  she  laid  away  the  things 
scattered  about  the  room  by  Mrs.  Condon's  hasty 
dressing.  Her  own  belongings  were  always  in 
precise  order. 

A  sudden  hesitation  seized  her  at  the  thought 
of  going  down  to  the  crowd  at  the  music.  The 
women  made  her  uncomfortable.  It  wasn't  what 
they  said,  but  the  way  they  said  it;  and  the 
endless  questions  wearied  her.  She  was,  as 
well,  continually  bothered  by  her  inability  to  im 
press  upon  them  how  splendid  her  mother  was. 
Some  of  them  she  was  certain  did  not  appreciate 
her.  Mrs.  Condon  at  once  admitted  and  was  en 
tertained  by  this,  but  it  disturbed  Linda.  How 
ever,  she  understood  the  reason — when  any  nice 
men  came  along  they  always  liked  her  mother 
best.  This  made  the  women  mad. 

The  world,  she  gathered,  was  a  place  where 
women  played  a  game  of  men  with  each  other. 

[22] 


LINDA    CONDON 

It  was  very  difficult,  she  couldn't  comprehend  the 
rules  or  reason;  and  Linda  was  afraid  that  she 
would  be  unsuccessful  and  never  have  the  per 
fect  time  her  mother  wanted  for  her.  In  the  first 
place,  she  was  too  thin,  and  then  she  knew  that 
she  could  never  talk  like  her  dearest.  Perhaps 
when  she  had  had  some  wine  it  would  be  different. 

She  decided,  after  all,  to  go  down  to  the  assem 
blage;  and,  by  one  of  the  white  marble  pillars, 
Mrs.  Randall  captured  her.  "Why,  here's  Linda- 
all-alone,"  Mrs.  Randall  said.  "Mama  out 
again?"  Linda  replied  stoutly,  "She  has  a 
dreadful  lot  of  invitations." 

Mrs.  Randall,  who  wore  much  brighter  clothes 
than  her  mother,  was  called  by  the  latter  an  old 
buzzard.  She  was  very  old,  Linda  could  see,  with 
perfectly  useless  staring  patches  of  paint  on  her 
wrinkled  cheeks,  and  eyes  that  look  as  though 
they  might  come  right  out  of  her  head.  Her 
frizzled  hair  supported  a  dead  false  twist  with  a 
glittering  diamond  pin,  and  her  soft  cold  hands 
were  loaded  with  jewels.  She  frightened  Linda, 
really,  although  she  could  not  say  why.  Mrs. 
Randall  was  a  great  deal  like  the  witch  in  a  fairy- 
story,  but  that  wasn't  it.  Linda  hadn't  the  belief 
in  witches  necessary  for  dread.  It  might  be  her 

[23] 


LINDA    CONDON 

scratching  voice ;  or  the  way  she  turned  her  head, 
without  any  chin  at  all,  like  a  turtle;  or  her 
dresses,  which  led  you  to  expect  a  person  .very 
different  from  an  old  buzzard. 

"Of  course  she  does,"  said  Mrs.  Randall,  "any 
number  of  invitations,  and  why  shouldn't  she? 
Your  mother  is  very  pleasant,  to  be  sure."  She 
nodded  wisely  to  the  woman  beside  her,  Miss 
Skillern. 

Miss  Skillern  was  short  and  broad  and,  in 
the  evening,  always  wore  curled  ostrich  plumes 
on  tightly  filled  gray  puffs.  She  reminded  Linda 
of  a  wadded  chair.  Mrs.  Randall,  after  the 
other's  slight  stiff  assent,  continued: 

"Your  mama  would  never  be  lonely,  not  she. 
All  I  wonder  is  she  doesn't  get  married  again — 
with  that  blondine  of  hers.  Wouldn't  you  rather 
have  one  papa  than,  in  a  way  of  speaking,  a  dif 
ferent  one  at  every  hotel?" 

Linda,  completely  at  a  loss  for  answer,  studied 
Mrs.  Randall  with  her  direct  deep  blue  gaze. 
Miss  Skillern  again  inclined  her  plumes.  With 
the  rest  of  her  immobile  she  was  surprisingly  like 
one  of  those  fat  china  figures  with  a  nodding  head. 
Linda  was  assaulted  by  the  familiar  bewildered 
feeling  of  not  understanding  what  was  said  and, 

[24] 


LINDA   CONDON 

at  the  same  time,  passionately  resenting  it  from  an 
inner  sensitive  recognition  of  something  wrong. 

"How  could  I  have  that?"  she  finally  asked. 

"How?"  repeated  Miss  Skillern,  breathing 
loudly. 

"Yes,  how?"  Mrs.  Randall  echoed.  "You  can 
ask  your  mama.  You  really  can.  And  you  may 
say  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  question  came 
from  us,"  she  included  her  companion. 

"From  you,"  Miss  Skillern  exactly  corrected 
her. 

"Indeed,"  the  other  cried  heatedly,  "from  me! 
I  think  not.  Didn't  you  ask?  Answer  me  that, 
if  you  please.  I  heard  you  with  my  own  ears 
say,  'How?'  While  now,  before  my  face,  you 
try  to  deny  it."  It  was  plain  to  Linda  that  Miss 
Skillern  was  totally  unmoved  by  the  charge. 
She  moved  her  lorgnette  up,  gazing  stolidly  at 
the  musical  programme.  "From  you,"  she  said 
again,  after  a  little.  Mrs.  Randall  suddenly  re 
gained  her  equilibrium. 

"If  the  ladies  of  this  hotel  are  afraid  to  face 
that  creature  I — I — am  not.  I'll  tell  her  in  a 
minute  what  a  respectable  person  thinks  of  her 
goings-on.  More  than  that,  I  shall  complain  to 
Mr.  Rennert.  'Mr.  Rennert/  I'll  say,  'either  she 

[25] 


LINDA    CONDON 

leaves  or  me.  Choose  as  you  will.  The  reputa 
tion  of  your  hotel — '  "  she  spluttered  and  paused. 

"Proof,"  Miss  Skillern  pronounced  judicially; 
"proof.  We  know,  but  that's  not  proof." 

"He  has  a  wife,"  Mrs.  Randall  replied  in  a 
shrill  whisper;  "a  wife  who  is  an  invalid.  Mrs. 
Zoock,  she  who  had  St.  Vitus'  dance  and  left  yes 
terday,  heard  it  direct.  George  A.  Jasper, 
woolen  mills  in  Frankford,  Pennsylvania.  Mr. 
Rennert  would  thank  me  for  that  information." 

They  had  forgotten  Linda.  She  stood  rigid 
and  cold — they  were  blaming  her  mother  for  go 
ing  out  in  a  rolling  chair  with  Mr.  Jasper  be 
cause  he  was  married.  But  her  mother  didn't 
know  that;  probably  Mr.  Jasper  had  not  given  it 
a  thought.  She  was  at  the  point  of  making  this 
clear,  when  it  seemed  to  her  that  it  might  be  better 
to  say  that  her  mother  knew  everything  there  was 
about  Mr.  Jasper's  wife;  she  could  even  add  that 
they  were  all  friends. 

Linda  would  have  to  tell  her  mother  the  second 
she  came  in,  and  then,  of  course,  she'd  stop  going 
with  Mr.  Jasper.  Men,  she  thought  in  the  elder's 
phrase,  were  too  beastly  for  words. 

"After  all,"  Mrs.  Randall  was  addressing  her 
[26] 


LINDA    CONDON 

again,  "you  needn't  say  anything  at  all  to  your 
mama.  It  might  make  her  so  cross  that  she'd 
spank  you." 

"Mother  never  spanks  me,"  Linda  replied  with 
dignity. 

"If  you  were  my  little  girl,"  said  Miss  Skillern, 
with  rolling  lips,  "I'd  put  you  over  my  knee  with 
your  skirts  up  and  paddle  you." 

Never,  Linda  thought,  had  she  heard  anything 
worse;  she  was  profoundly  shocked.  The  vision 
of  Miss  Skillern  performing  such  an  operation 
as  she  had  described  cut  its  horror  on  her  mind. 
There  was  a  sinking  at  her  heart  and  a  misty 
threat  of  tears. 

To  avert  this  she  walked  slowly  away.  It  was 
hardly  past  nine  o'clock;  her  mother  wouldn't  be 
back  for  a  long  while,  and  she  was  too  restless 
and  unhappy  to  sit  quietly  above.  Instead,  she 
continued  down  to  the  floor  where  there  were 
various  games  in  the  corridor  leading  to  the  bil 
liard-room.  The  hall  was  dull,  no  one  was  click 
ing  the  balls  about  the  green  tables,  and  a  solitary 
sick-looking  man,  with  inky  shadows  under  fixed 
eyes,  was  smoking  a  cigarette  in  a  chair  across 
from  the  cigar-stand. 

[27] 


LINDA    CONDON 

He  looked  over  a  thick  magazine  in  a  chocolate 
cover,  his  gaze  arrested  by  her  irresolute  passage. 
"Hello,  Bellina,"  he  said. 

She  stopped.  "Linda,"  she  corrected  him, 
"Linda  Condon."  Obeying  a  sudden  impulse, 
she  dropped,  with  a  sigh,  into  a  place  beside  him. 

"You're  bored,"  he  went  on,  the  magazine  put 
away.  "So  am  I,  but  my  term  is  short." 

She  wondered,  principally,  what  he  was  doing, 
among  so  many  women,  at  the  Boscombe.  He 
was  different  from  Mr.  Jasper,  or  the  other  men 
with  fat  stomachs,  the  old  men  with  dragging 
feet.  It  embarrassed  her  to  meet  his  gaze,  it  was 
so — so  investigating.  She  guessed  he  was  by  the 
sea  because  he  felt  as  badly  as  he  looked.  He 
asked  surprisingly: 

"Why  are  you  here?" 

"On  the  account  of  my  mother,"  she  explained. 
"But  it  doesn't  matter  much  where  I  am.  Places 
are  all  alike,"  she  continued  conversationally. 
"We're  mostly  at  hotels — Florida  in  winter  and 
Lake  George  in  summer.  This  is  kind  of  be 
tween." 

"Oh!"  he  said;  and  she  was  sure,  from  that 
short  single  exclamation,  he  understood  every 
thing. 

[28] 


LINDA    CONDON 

"Like  all  true  beauty,"  he  added,  "it's  plain 
that  you  are  durable." 

"I  don't  like  the  seashore,"  she  went  on  easily; 
"I'd  rather  be  in  a  garden  with  piles  of  flowers 
and  a  big  hedge." 

"Have  you  ever  lived  in  a  garden-close?" 

"No,"  she  admitted;  "it's  just  an  idea.  I  told 
mother  but  she  laughed  at  me  and  said  a  roof- 
garden  was  her  choice." 

"Some  day  you'll  have  the  place  you  describe," 
he  assured  her.  "It  is  written  all  over  you.  I 
would 'like  to  see  you,  Bellina,  in  a  space  of  em 
erald  sod  and  geraniums."  She  decided  to  ac 
cept  without  further  protest  his  name  for  her. 
"You  are  right,  too,  about  the  hedge — the  highest 
and  thickest  in  creation.  I  should  recommend  a 
pseudo-classic  house,  Georgian,  rather  small,  a 
white  facade  against  the  grass.  A  Jacobean  din 
ing-room,  dark  certainly,  the  French  windows 
open  on  dipping  candle  flames.  You'd  wear 
white,  with  your  hair  low  and  the  midnight  bang 
as  it  is  now." 

"That  would  be  awfully  nice,"  Linda  replied 
vaguely.  She  sighed. 

"But  a  very  light  drawing-room!"  he  cried. 
"White  panels  and  arches  and  Canton-blue  rugs 

[29] 


LINDA    CONDON 

— the  brothers  Adam.  A  fluted  mantel,  Mcln- 
tires,  and  a  brass  hod.  Curiously  enough,  I  al 
ways  see  you  in  the  evening  ...  at  the  piano. 
I'm  not  so  bored,  now."  Little  flames  of  red 
burned  in  either  thin  cheek.  "What  nonsense!" 
Suddenly  he  was  tired.  "This  is  a  practical  and 
earnest  world,"  his  voice  grew  thin  and  hurt  her. 
"Yet  beauty  is  relentless.  You'll  have  your  gar 
den,  but  I  shouldn't  be  surprised  at  difficulties 
first." 

"It  won't  be  so  hard  to  get,"  she  declared  con 
fidently.  "I  mean  to  choose  the  right  man. 
Mother  says  that's  the  answer.  Women,  she 
says,  won't  use  their  senses." 

"Ah." 

Linda  began  to  think  this  was  a  most  unpleas 
ant  monosyllable. 

"So  that's  the  lay!     Has  she  succeeded?" 

"She  has  a  splendid  time.  She's  out  tonight 
with  Mr.  Jasper  in  a  rolling  chair,  and  he  has 
loads  and  loads  of  money.  It  makes  all  the  other 


women  cross." 


"Here  you  are,  then,  till  she  gets  back?" 
"There's  no  one  else." 

"But,    as    a    parent,    infinitely   preferable    to 
the    righteous,"    he   murmured.     "And    you — " 

[30] 


LINDA    CONDON 

"I  think  mother's  perfect,"  she  answered 
simply. 

He  shook  his  head.  "You  won't  succeed  at  it, 
though.  Your  mother,  for  example,  isn't  dark." 

"The  loveliest  gold  hair,"  she  said  ecstatically. 
"She's  much  much  prettier  than  I'll  ever  be." 

"Prettier,  yes.  The  trouble  is,  you  are  lovely, 
magical.  You  will  stay  for  a  lifetime  in  the 
memory.  The  merest  touch  of  you  will  be  more 
potent  than  any  duty  or  fidelity.  A  man's  only 
salvation  will  be  his  blindness." 

Although  she  didn't  understand  a  word  of  this, 
Linda  liked  to  hear  him;  he  was  talking  as 
though  she  were  grown  up,  and  in  response  to  the 
flattery  she  was  magnetic  and  eager. 

"One  time,"  he  said,  "very  long  ago,  beauty  was 
worshiped.  Men,  you  see,  know  better  now. 
They  want  their  dollar's  worth.  The  world  was 
absolutely  different  then — there  were  deep  ad 
venturous  forests  with  holy  chapels  in  the  green 
combe  for  an  orison,  and  hermits  rising  to  Para 
dise  on  the  Te  Deum  Laudamus  of  the  angels 
and  archangels.  There  were  black  castles  and,  in 
the  broad  meadows,  silk  tents  with  ivory  pegs  and 
poles  of  gold. 

The  enchantments  were  as  thick  as  shadows 
[31] 


LINDA    CONDON 

under  the  trees:  perhaps  the  loveliest  of  women 
riding  a  snow-white  mule,  with  a  saddle  cloth 
of  red  samite,  or,  wrapped  in  her  shining  hair, 
on  a  leopard  with  yellow  eyes,  lured  you  to  a  pa 
vilion,  scattered  with  rushes  and  flowers  and 
magical  herbs,  and  a  shameful  end.  Or  a  silver 
doe  would  weep,  begging  you  to  pierce  her  with 
your  sword,  and,  when  you  did,  there  knelt  the 
daughter  of  the  King  of  Wales. 

"But  I  started  to  tell  you  about  the  worship  of 
beauty.  Plato  started  it  although  Cardinal  Pietro 
Bembo  was  responsible  for  the  creed.  He  lived 
in  Italy,  in  an  age  like  a  lily.  It  developed 
mostly  at  Florence  in  the  Platonic  Academy  of 
Cosomo  and  Pico  della  Mirandola.  Love  was 
the  supreme  force,  and  its  greatest  expression  a 
desire  beyond  the  body." 

He  gazed  at  Linda  with  a  quizzical  light  in  his 
eyes  deep  in  shadow. 

"Love,"  he  said  again,  and  then  paused. 
"One  set  of  words  will  do  as  well  as  another. 
You  will  understand,  or  not,  with  something  far 
different  from  intellectual  comprehension.  The 
endless  service  of  beauty.  Of  course,  a  woman — 
but  never  the  animal;  the  spirit  always.  Born 
in  the  spirit,  served  in  the  spirit,  ending  in  the 

[32] 


LINDA    CONDON 

spirit.     A  direct  contradiction,  you  see,  to  nat 
and  common  sense,  frugality  and  the  sacred  sym 
bol  of  the  dollar. 

"It  wouldn't  please  your  Mr.  Jasper,  with  his 
heaps  and  heaps  of  money.  Mr.  Jasper  would 
consider  himself  sold.  But  Novalis,  not  so  very 
long  ago,  understood.  ...  A  dead  girl  more  real 
than  all  earth.  You  mustn't  suppose  it  to  be  mere 
mysticism." 

Linda  said,  "Very  well,  I  won't." 

He  nodded.  "No  one  could  call  Michelangelo 
hysterical.  Sometime  in  the  history  of  man,  of 
a  salt  solution,  this  divinity  has  touched  them. 
Touched  them  hopefully,  and  perhaps  gone — 
banished  by  the  other  destination.  Or  I  can 
comprehend  nature  killing  it  relentlessly,  since  it 
didn't  lead  to  propagation.  Then,  too,  as  much 
as  was  useful  was  turned  into  a  dogma  for  politics 
and  priests. 

"You  saw  in  the  rushlight  a  woman  against 
the  arras ;  there  was  a  humming  of  viola  d'amore 
from  the  musicians'  balcony;  she  smiled  at  you, 
lingering,  and  then  vanished  with  a  whisper  of 
brocade  de  Lyons  on  a  sanded  floor.  Nothing 
else  but  a  soft  white  glove,  eternally  fragrant,  in 
your  habergeon,  an  eternally  fragrant  memory; 

[33]   ' 


LINDA   CONDON 

the  dim  vision  in  stone  street  and  coppice;  a  word, 
a  message,  it  might  be,  sent  across  the  world  of 
steel  at  death.  And  then,  in  the  last  flicker  of 
vision,  the  arras  and  the  clear  insistent  strings,  the 
whispering  brocade  de  Lyons  on  the  landing. 

"The  philosophy  of  it,"  he  said  in  a  different 
tone,  "is  exact,  even  a  scientific  truth.  But  men 
have  been  more  concerned  with  turning  lead  into 
gold;  naturally  the  spirit  has  been  neglected. 
The  science  of  love  has  been  incredibly  soiled : 

"The  old  gesture  toward  the  stars,  the  bridge 
of  perfection,  the  escape  from  the  fatality  of  flesh. 
Yet  it  was  a  service  of  the  body  made  incredibly 
lovely  in  actuality  and  still  never  to  be  grasped. 
Never  to  be  won.  It  ought  to  be  clear  to  you  that 
realized  it  would  diminish  into  quite  a  different 
thing — 

"  'La  figlia  delta  sua  mente,  V amoroso,  idea.' ' 

His  voice  grew  so  faint  that  Linda  could 
scarcely  distinguish  articulate  sounds.  All  that 
he  said,  without  meaning  for  her,  stirred  her  heart. 
She  was  used  to  elder  enigmas  of  speech ;  her  nor 
mal  response  was  instinctively  emotional,  and  noth 
ing  detracted  from  the  gravity  of  her  attention. 

"Not  in  pious  men,"  he  continued,  more  un 
certain;  "nor  in  seminaries  of  virtue.  They 

[34] 


LINDA   CONDON 

have  their  reward.  But  in  men  whose  bitterness 
of  longing  grew  out  of  hideous  fault.  The  dis 
tinction  of  beauty — not  a  payment  for  prayers  or 
chastity.  The  distinction  of  love  .  .  .  above 
chests  of  linen  and  a  banker's  talent  and  patents 
of  nobility  .  .  .  Divine  need.  Idiotic.  But 
what  else,  what  better,  offers ?" 

He  was,  she  saw,  terribly  sick.  His  hands 
were  clenched  and  his  entire  being  strained  and 
rigid,  as  though  he  were  trying  to  do  something 
tremendously  difficult.  At  last,  with  infinite 
pain,  he  succeeded. 

"I  must  get  away,"  he  articulated. 

Linda  was  surprised  at  the  effort  necessary  for 
this  slight  accomplishment  when  he  had  said  the 
most  bewildering  things  with  complete  ease. 
Well,  the  elevators  were  right  in  front  of  him. 
He  rose  slowly,  and,  with  Linda  standing  at  his 
side,  dug  a  sharp  hand  into  her  shoulder.  It 
hurt,  but  instinctively  she  bore  it  and,  moving 
forward,  partly  supported  him.  She  pressed  the 
bell  that  signaled  for  the  elevator  and  it  al 
most  immediately  sank  into  view.  "Hurry,"  he 
said  harshly  to  the  colored  operator  in  a  green 
uniform;  and  quite  suddenly,  leaving  a  sense  of 
profound  mystery,  he  disappeared. 

[35] 


Ill 

LINDA  decided  that  he  had  told  her  a 
rather  stupid  fairy  story.  She  was  too 
old  for  such  ridiculous  things  as  ladies 
in  their  shining  hair  on  a  leopard.  She  remem 
bered  clearly  seeing  one  of  the  latter  at  a  zoologi 
cal  garden.  It  had  yellow  eyes,  but  no  one  would 
care  to  ride  on  it.  Her  mother,  she  was  certain, 
knew  more  about  love  than  any  man.  His  words 
faded  quickly  from  her  memory,  but  a  confused 
rich  sense  stirred  her  heart,  a  feeling  such  as  she 
experienced  after  an  unusually  happy  day:  white 
gloves  and  music  and  Mr.  Jasper  displeased. 

A  clock  chimed  ten,  and  she  proceeded  to  her 
mother's  room,  where  she  must  wait  up  with  her 
information  about  Mr.  Jasper's  wife.  She  was 
furious  at  him  for  a  carelessness  that  had  brought 
her  mother  such  unfavorable  criticism.  Every 
thing  had  been  put  away  before  going  down,  and 
there  was  nothing  for  her  to  do.  The  time 
dragged  tediously.  The  hands  of  the  traveling- 
clock  in  purple  leather  on  the  dressing-table 

[36] 


LINDA    CONDON 

moved  deliberately  around  to  eleven.  A  ringing 
of  ice  in  one  of  the  metal  pitchers  carried  by  the 
bell  boys  sounded  from  the  corridor.  There  was 
the  faint  wail  of  a  baby. 

Suddenly  and  acutely  Linda  was  lonely — a 
new  kind  of  loneliness  that  had  nothing  to  do 
with  the  fact  that  she  was  by  herself.  It  was  a 
strange  cold  unhappiness,  pressing  over  her  like 
a  cloud  and,  at  the  same  time,  it  was  nothing  at 
all.  That  is,  there  was  no  reason  for  it.  The 
room  was  brightly  lighted  and,  anyhow,  she 
wasn't  afraid  of  "things."  She  thought  that  at 
any  minute  she  must  cry  like  that  baby.  After  a 
little  she  felt  better;  rather  the  unhappiness 
changed  to  wanting.  What  she  wanted  was  a 
puzzle;  but  nothing  else  would  satisfy  her.  It 
might  be  a  necklace  of  little  pearls,  but  it  wasn't. 
It  might  be — .  Now  it  was  twelve  o'clock. 
Dear,  dear,  why  didn't  she  come  backl 

Music,  awfully  faint,  and  a  whisper,  like  a 
dress,  across  the  floor.  Her  emotion  changed 
again,  to  an  extraordinary  delight,  a  glow  like 
that  which  filled  her  at  the  expression  of  her 
adoration  for  her  mother,  but  infinitely  greater. 
She  was  seated,  and  she  lifted  her  head  with  her 
eyes  closed  and  hands  clasped.  The  clock 

[37] 


LINDA   CONDON 

pointed  to  one  and  her  parent  came  into  the  room. 

"Linda,"  she  exclaimed  crossly,  "whatever  are 
you  doing  up?  A  bad  little  girl.  I  told  you 
to  be  asleep  hours  before  this." 

"There  is  something  you  had  to  know  right 
away,"  Linda  informed  her  solemnly.  "I  only 
just  heard  it  from  Mrs.  Randall  and  Miss  Skill- 
ern."  Her  mother's  flushed  face  hardened. 
"Mr.  Jasper  is  married,"  Linda  said. 

Mrs.  Condon  dropped  with  an  angry  flounce 
into  a  chair.  Her  broad  scarf  of  sealskin  slipped 
from  one  shoulder.  Her  hat  was  crooked  and 
her  hair  disarranged.  "So  that's  it,"  she  said 
bitterly;  "and  they  went  to  you.  The  dam'  old 
foxes.  They  went  to  you,  nothing  more  than  a 
child." 

Linda  put  in,  "They  didn't  mean  to;  it  just 
sort  of  came  out.  I  knew  you'd  stop  as  soon  as 
you  heard.  Wasn't  it  horrid  of  him?" 

"And  this,"  Mrs.  Condon  declared,  "is  what  I 
get  for  being,  yes — proper. 

"I  said  to-night,  'George/  I  said,  'go  right 
back  home.  It's  the  only  thing.  They  have  a 
right  to  you.'  I  told  him  that  only  to-night. 
And,  'No,  I  must  consider  my  little  Linda.'  If 
I  had  held  up  my  finger,"  she  held  up  a  finger  to 
[38] 


'LINDA   CONDON 

show  the  smallness  of  the  act  necessary,  "where 
would  we  have  all  been? 

"But  this  is  what  I  get.  You  might  think  the 
world  would  notice  a  woman's  best  efforts.  No, 
they  all  try  to  crowd  her  and  see  her  slip.  If 
they  don't  watch  out  I'll  skid,  all  right,  and  with 
some  one  they  least  expect.  I  have  opportuni 
ties." 

Linda  realized  with  a  sense  of  confusion  that 
her  mother  had  known  of  Mr.  Jasper's  marriage 
all  the  while.  But  she  had  nobly  tried  to  save 
him  from  something;  just  what  Linda  couldn't 
make  out.  The  other's  breath  was  heavy  with 
drinking. 

"You  go  to  bed,  Lin,"  she  continued;  "and 
thank  you  for  taking  care  of  mama.  I  hope  to 
goodness  you'll  learn  from  all  this — pick  out 
what  you  want  and  make  for  it.  Don't  bother 
with  the  antique  frumps,  the  disappointed  old 
tabbies.  Have  your  fun.  There's  nothing  else. 
If  you  like  a  man,  be  on  the  level  with  him — give 
and  take.  Men  are  not  saints  and  we're  better 
for  it;  we  don't  live  in  a  heaven.  You've  got  a 
sweet  little  figure.  Always  remember  mama 
telling  you  that  the  most  expensive  corsets  are  the 
cheapest  in  the  end." 

[39] 


LINDA    CONDON 

Linda  undressed  slowly  and  methodically,  her 
mother's  words  ringing  in  her  head.  Always  re 
member — but  of  course  she  would  have  the  nicest 
things  possible.  ...  A  keepsake  and  faint  music. 
She  thought,  privately,  that  she  was  too  thin; 
she'd  rather  be  her  mother,  with  shoulders  like 
bunches  of  smooth  pink  roses.  In  bed,  just  as 
she  was  falling  asleep,  a  sound  disturbed  her 
from  the  corridor  above — the  slow  tramping  of 
heavy  feet,  like  a  number  of  men  carefully  bear 
ing  an  awkward  object.  She  listened  with  sus 
pended  breath  while  they  passed.  The  footfalls 
seemed  to  pound  on  her  heart.  Slowly  slowly 
they  went,  unnatural  and  measured.  They  were 
gone  now,  but  she  still  heard  them.  The  crush 
ing  of  her  mother  into  bed  followed  with  a 
deep  sigh.  The  long  fall  of  a  wave  on  the  shore 
was  audible.  Two  things  contended  in  her  stilled 
brain — the  mysterious  feeling  of  desire  and  her 
mother's  advice.  They  were  separate  and 
fought,  yet  they  were  strangely  incomprehensibly 
joined. 


[40] 


IV 

IN  the  morning  Mrs.  Condon,  with  a  very 
late  breakfast-tray  in  bed,  had  regained  her 
usual  cheerful  manner.  "The  truth  is,"  she 
told  Linda,  "I'm  glad  that  Jasper  man  has  gone. 
He  had  no  idea  of  discretion;  tired  of  them  any 
how."  Linda  radiated  happiness.  This  was 
the  mother  she  loved  above  all  others.  Her  mind 
turned  a  little  to  the  man  who  had  talked  to  her 
the  night  before.  She  wondered  if  he  were  bet 
ter.  His  thin  blanched  face,  his  eyes  gleaming 
uncomfortably  in  smudges,  recurred  to  her. 
Perhaps  he'd  be  down  by  the  cigar-stand  again. 
She  went,  presently,  to  see,  but  the  row  of  chairs 
was  empty. 

However,  the  neglected  thick  brown-covered 
magazine  was  still  on  the  ledge  by  which  he 
had  been  sitting.  There  was  a  name  on  it,  and 
while,  ordinarily,  she  couldn't  read  handwriting, 
this  was  so  clear  and  regular,  but  minutely  small, 
that  she  was  able  to  spell  it  out — Howard  Welles. 

It  disappointed  her  not  to  find  him;  at  lunch 
she  observed  nearly  every  one  present,  but  still  he 

[41] 


LINDA    CONDON 

was  lost.  He  wasn't  listening  to  the  music  after 
dinner,  nor  below.  A  deep  sense  of  disappoint 
ment  grew  within  her.  Linda  wanted  to  see  him, 
hear  him  talk;  at  times  a  sharp  hurt  in  the 
shoulder  he  had  grasped  brought  him  back 
vividly.  The  next  day  it  was  the  same,  and 
finally,  diffidently,  she  approached  the  hotel  desk. 
A  clerk  she  knew,  Mr.  Fiske,  was  rapidly  sorting 
mail,  and  she  waited  politely  until  he  had 
finished. 

"Well?"  he  asked. 

"I  found  this  down-stairs,"  she  said,  giving 
him  the  magazine.  "Perhaps  he'll  want  it." 
Mr.  Fiske  looked  at  the  written  name,  and  then 
glanced  sharply  at  her.  "No,"  he  told  her 
brusquely,  "he  won't  want  it."  He  turned  away 
with  the  magazine  and  left  Linda  standing  ir 
resolutely.  She  wanted  to  ask  if  Mr.  Welles  were 
still  at  the  Boscombe;  if  the  latter  didn't  want 
the  magazine  she'd  love  to  have  it.  Linda 
couldn't  tell  why.  But  the  clerk  went  into  the 
treasurer's  office  and  she  was  forced  to  move 
away. 

Later,  lingering  inexplicably  about  the  spot 
where  she  had  heard  so  many  bewildering  words, 
a  very  different  man  spoke  to  her.  He,  Linda 

[42] 


LINDA    CONDON 

observed,  was  smoking  a  cigar,  a  good  one, 
she  was  certain.  He  was  smallish  and  had  a 
short  bristling  mustache  and  head  partly  bald. 
His  shoes  were  very  shiny  and  altogether  he  had 
a  look  of  prosperity.  "Hello,  cutie!"  he  cried, 
capturing  her  arm.  She  responded  listlessly. 
The  other  produced  a  crisp  dollar  bill.  "Do  you 
see  the  chocolates  in  that  case?"  he  said,  indicat 
ing  the  cigar-stand.  "Well,  get  the  best.  If 
they  cost  more,  let  me  know.  Our  financial 
rating  is  number  one."  Linda  answered  that 
she  didn't  think  she  cared  for  any.  "All  right," 
the  man  agreed;  "sink  the  note  in  the  First  Na 
tional  Ladies  Bank,  if  you  know  where  that  is." 

He  engineered  her  unwillingly  onto  a  knee. 
"How's  papa?"  he  demanded.  "I  suppose  he 
will  be  here  Saturday  to  take  his  family  through 
the  stores?" 

She  replied  with  dignity,  "There  is  only  my 
mother  and  me." 

At  this  information  he  exclaimed  "Ah!"  and 
touched  his  mustache  with  a  diminutive  gold- 
backed  brush  from  a  leather  case.  "That's  more 
than  I  have,"  he  confided  to  her;  "there  is  only 
myself.  Isn't  that  sad?  You  must  be  sorry  for 
the  lonely  old  boy." 

[43] 


LINDA   CONDON 

She  wasn't.  Probably  he,  too,  had  a  wife 
somewhere;  men  were  beastly.  "I  guess  your 
mother  wants  a  little  company  at  times  herself?" 

Linda,  straining  away  from  him,  replied,  "Oh, 
dear,  no ;  there  are  just  packs  of  gentlemen  when 
ever  she  likes.  But  she  is  tired  of  them  all." 
She  escaped  and  he  settled  his  waistcoat. 

"You  mustn't  run  away,"  he  admonished  her; 
"nice  children  don't.  Your  mother  didn't  bring 
you  up  like  that,  I'm  sure.  She  wouldn't  like 
it." 

Linda  hesitated,  plainly  conveying  the  fact 
that,  if  she  were  to  wait,  he  would  have  to  say 
something  really  important. 

"Just  you  two,"  he  deliberated;  "Miss  and 
Mrs.  Jones." 

"Not  at  all,"  Linda  asserted  shortly;  "our 
name  is  Condon." 

"I  wonder  if  you'd  tell  her  this,"  he  went  on: 
"a  gentleman's  here  by  himself  named  Bard- 
well,  who  has  seen  her  and  admires  her  a  whole 
lot.  Tell  her  he's  no  young  sprig  but  he  likes  a 
good  time  all  the  better.  Dependable,  too.  Re 
member  that,  cutie.  And  he  wouldn't  presume  if 
he  had  a  short  pocket.  He  knows  class  when  he 


sees  it." 


[44] 


LINDA   CONDON 

"It  won't  do  any  good/'  Linda  assured  him  in 
her  gravest  manner.  "She  said  only  this  morn 
ing  she  was  sick  of  them." 

"That  was  before  dinner,"  he  replied  cheer 
fully.  "Things  look  different  later  in  the  day. 
You  do  what  I  tell  you." 

All  this  Linda  dutifully  repeated.  Her  mother 
was  at  the  dressing-table,  rubbing  cream  into  her 
cheeks,  and  she  paused,  surveying  her  reflection 
in  the  mirror.  "He  was  smoking  a  big  cigar," 
Linda  added.  The  other  laughed.  "What  a 
sharp  little  thing  you  are!"  she  exclaimed.  "A 
body  ought  to  be  careful  what  they  tell  you." 
She  wiped  off  the  cream  and  rubbed  a  soft  pinkish 
powder  into  her  skin. 

"He  saw  me,  did  he?"  she  apparently  ad 
dressed  the  glass.  "Admired  me  a  whole  lot. 
Was  he  nice,  Linda?"  she  turned.  "Were  his 
clothes  right?  You  must  point  him  out  to  me 
to-night.  But  do  it  carefully,  darling.  No  one 
should  notice.  Your  mother  isn't  on  the  shelf 
yet;  she  can  hold  her  own,  even  in  the  Boscombe, 
against  the  whole  barnyard." 

Linda,  at  the  entrance  to  the  dining-room, 
whispered,  "There  he  is."  But  immediately  Mr. 
Bard  well  was  smiling  and  speaking  to  them. 

[45] 


LINDA    CONDON 

"I  had  a  delightful  conversation  with  your  little 
girl  to-day,"  he  told  Mrs.  Condon;  "such  a  pretty 
child  and  well  brought  up." 

"And  good,  too,"  her  mother  replied;  "not  a 
minute's  trouble.  The  common  sense  of  the 
grown ;  you'd  never  believe  it." 

"Why  shouldn't  I?"  he  protested  gallantly. 
"Every  reason  to."  Mrs.  Condon  blushed  be 
comingly. 

"She  had  to  make  up  for  a  lot,"  she  sighed. 

An  hour  or  more  after  dinner  Mrs.  Randall 
stopped  Linda  in  the  hall  beyond  the  music. 
"Mama  out?"  she  inquired  brightly.  "I  thought 
Mr.  Jasper  left  this  morning?" 

Linda  told  her  that  Mr.  Jasper  had  gone;  she 
added  nothing  else. 

"I  must  look  at  the  register,"  Mrs.  Randall 
continued;  "I  really  must." 

Obeying  an  uncontrollable  impulse  Linda  half 
cried,  "I'd  like  to  see  you  riding  on  a  leopard!" 
A  flood  of  misery  enveloped  her,  and  she  hurried 
up  to  the  silence  of  her  mother's  deserted  room. 


[46] 


IT  was  on  her  fourteenth  birthday  that  Linda 
noticed  a  decided  change  in  her  mother;  a 
change,  unfortunately,  that  most  of  all  af 
fected  the  celebrated  good  humors.  In  the  first 
place  Mrs.  Condon  spent  an  increasingly  large 
part  of  the  day  before  the  mirror  of  her  dressing- 
table,  but  without  any  proportionate  pleasure;  or, 
if  there  was  a  proportion  kept,  it  exhibited  the 
negative  result  of  a  growing  annoyance.  "God 
knows  why  they  all  show  at  once,"  she  exclaimed 
discontentedly,  seated — as  customary — before  the 
eminently  truthful  reflection  of  a  newly  discovered 
set  of  lines.  "I'm  not  old  enough  to  begin  to 
look  like  a  hag." 

"Oh,  mother,"  Linda  protested,  shocked,  "you 
mustn't  say  such  horrid  things  about  yourself. 
Why,  you're  perfectly  lovely,  and  you  don't  seem 
a  speck  older  than  you  did  years  ago." 

The  other,  biting  her  full  underlip  at  the  un 
welcome  fact  in  turn  biting  a  full  lower  lip  back 
at  her,  made  no  reply.  Linda  lingered  for  a 

[47] 


LINDA    CONDON 

moment  at  her  mother's  ruffled  pink  shoulders; 
then,  with  a  sigh,  she  turned  to  the  reception-room 
of  their  small  suite  at  the  Hotel  Gontram.  It 
was  a  somber  chamber  furnished  in  red  plush, 
with  a  complication  of  shades  and  gray-white 
net  curtains  at  long  windows  and  a  deep  green 
carpet.  There  was  a  fireplace,  with  a  grate,  sup 
ported  by  varnished  oak  pillars  and  elaborate 
mantel  and  glass,  a  glittering  reddish  center-table 
with  a  great  many  small  odd  shelves  below,  a 
desk  with  sheaves  of  hotel  writing  paper  and  the 
telephone. 

The  Gontram  was  entirely  different  from  the 
hotels  at  the  lakes  or  seashore  or  in  the  South. 
It  was  a  solid  part  of  a  short  block  west  of  Fifth 
Avenue  in  the  middle  of  the  city.  Sherry's  filled 
a  corner  with  its  massive  stone  bulk  and  glimpses 
of  dining-rooms  with  glittering  chandeliers  and 
solemn  gaiety,  then  impressive  clubs  and  wide 
entrances  under  heavy  glass  and  metal,  tall  por 
ters  in  splendid  livery,  succeeded  each  other  to  the 
Hotel  Gontram  and  the  dull  thunder  of  the  ele 
vated  trains  beyond. 

The  revolving  door,  through  which  Linda  se 
dately  permitted  herself  to  be  moved,  opened  into 
a  high  space  of  numerous  columns  and  benches, 

[48] 

.. 


LINDA    CONDON 

writing-desks  and  palms.  At  the  back  was  the 
white  room  where,  usually  alone,  she  had  break 
fast,  while  the  dining-room,  discreetly  lighted, 
was  at  the  left.  It  was  more  interesting  here 
than,  for  example,  at  the  Boscombe;  people  were 
always  coming  in  or  going,  and  there  were  quan 
tities  of  men.  She  watched  them  arriving  with 
shoals  of  leather  bags  in  the  brisk  care  of  the 
bellboys,  disappear  into  the  elevator,  and,  if  it 
was  evening,  come  down  in  dinner  coats  with 
vivid  silk  scarfs  folded  over  their  white  shirts. 

The  women  were  perpetually  in  street  clothes 
pr  muffled  in  satin  wraps;  Linda  only  regarded 
them  when  they  were  exceptional.  Usually  she 
was  intent  on  the  men.  It  often  happened  that 
they  returned  her  frank  gaze  with  a  smile,  or 
stopped  to  converse  with  her.  Sometimes  it  was 
an  actor  with  a  face  dryly  pink  like  a  woman's 
from  make-up;  they  were  familiar  and  pinched 
her  cheeks,  calling  her  endearing  names  in  con 
scious  echoing  voices  as  if  they  were  quite  hollow 
within.  Then  there  were  simply  business  men, 
who  never  appeared  to  take  off  their  derby  hats, 
and  spoke  to  her  of  their  little  girls  at  home.  She 
was  entirely  at  ease  with  the  latter — so  many  of 
her  mother's  friends  were  similar — and  critically 

[49] 


LINDA   CONDON 

valued  the  details  of  their  dress,  the  cigar-cases 
with  or  without  gold  corners,  the  watch-chains 
with  jeweled  insignia,  the  cuff-links  and  em 
broidered  handkerchiefs. 

If  her  mother  approached  while  Linda  was  so 
engaged  the  elder  would  linger  with  a  faint  smile, 
at  which,  now,  the  girl  was  conscious  of  a  growing 
impatience.  She'd  rise  with  dignity  and,  if  pos 
sible,  escape  with  her  parent  from  florid  cour 
tesies.  This  sense  of  annoyance  oppressed  her, 
too,  in  the  dining-room,  where  her  mother,  a  cock 
tail  in  her  hand,  would  engage  in  long  cheerful 
discussions  with  the  captains  or  waiters.  Other 
women,  Linda  observed,  spoke  with  complete  in 
difference  and  their  attention  on  the  carte  de  jour. 
Of  course  it  was  much  more  friendly  to  be  in 
terested  in  the  servants'  affairs — they  told  her 
mother  about  their  wives  and  the  number  of  their 
children,  the  difficulties  of  bringing  both  ends  to 
gether,  and  served  her  with  the  promptest  care; 
but  instinctively  Linda  avoided  any  but  the  most 
formal  contact. 

She  had  to  insist,  as  well,  on  paying  the  tips; 
for  Mrs.  Condon,  her  sympathies  engaged,  was 
quite  apt  to  leave  on  the  table  a  five-dollar  bill 
or  an  indiscriminate  heap  of  silver.  "You  are  a 

[50] 


LINDA   CONDON 

regular  little  Jew,"  she  would  reply  lightly  to 
Linda's  protests.  This,  the  latter  thought,  was 
unfair;  for  the  only  Jew  she  knew,  Mr.  Moses 
Feldt,  an  acquaintance  of  their  present  period  in 
New  York,  was  quite  the  most  generous  person 
she  knew.  "  Certainly  you  don't  take  after  your 


mama." 


After  she  said  this  she  always  paused  with 
tight  lips.  It  was  charged  with  the  assumption 
that,  while  Linda  didn't  resemble  her,  she  did 
very  much  a  mysterious  and  unfavorably  re 
garded  personage.  Her  father,  probably.  More 
and  more  Linda  wondered  about  him.  He  was 
dead,  she  knew,  but  that,  she  began  to  see,  was 
no  reason  for  the  positive  prohibition  to  mention 
him  at  all.  Perhaps  he  had  done  something 
dreadful,  with  money,  and  had  disgraced  them 
all.  Yet  she  was  convinced  that  this  was  not  so. 

She  had  heard  a  great  many  uncomplimentary 
words  applied  to  husbands,  most  of  which  she 
had  been  unable  to  comprehend;  and  she  specu 
lated  blankly  on  them  in  her  mother's  connection. 
On  the  whole  the  women  agreed  that  they  were 
remarkably  stupid  and  transparent,  they  protested 
that  they  understood  and  guided  every  move  hus 
bands  made;  and  this  surely  gave  her  father  no 

[51] 


LINDA   CONDON 

opportunity  for  independent  crime.  She  was 
held  from  questioning  not  so  much  by  her 
mother's  command — at  times  she  calmly  and  suc 
cessfully  ignored  that — as  from  its  unfortunate 
effect  on  the  elder. 

Mrs.  Condon  would  burn  with  a  generalized 
anger  that  sank  to  a  despondency  fortified  by  the 
brandy  flask.  Straining  embraces  and  tears, 
painful  to  support,  would  follow,  or  more  un 
bearable  silliness.  The  old  difficulties  with 
giggling  or  sympathetic  chambermaids — Linda 
couldn't  decide  which  was  worse — then  con 
fronted  her  with  the  necessity  for  rigid  lies,  mis 
ery,  and  the  procuring  of  sums  of  money  from 
the  bag  in  the  top  drawer.  Altogether,  and  spe 
cially  with  the  fresh  difficulties  of  her  mother's 
unaccountable  irritation  and  apprehensions, 
things  were  frightfully  complicated. 

It  was  late  afternoon  in  November,  and  the 
electric  lights  were  on;  however,  they  were  lighted 
when  they  rose,  whenever  they  were  in  the  rooms, 
for  it  was  always  gloomy  if  not  positively  dark; 
the  bedroom  looked  into  a  deep  exterior  well  and 
the  windows  of  the  other  chamber  opened  on  an 
uncompromising  blank  wall.  Yet  Linda,  now 
widely  learned  in  such  settings,  rather  liked  her 

[52] 


LINDA    CONDON 

present  situation.  They  had  occupied  the  same 
suite  before,  for  one  thing;  and  going  back  into 
it  had  given  her  a  sense  of  familiarity  in  so  much 
that  always  shifted. 

Linda,  personally,  had  changed  very  little;  she 
was  taller  than  four  years  before,  but  not  a  great 
deal;  she  was,  perhaps,  more  graceful — her 
movements  had  become  less  sudden — more  as 
sured,  the  rapidly  maturing  qualities  of  her  mind 
made  visible;  and  she  had  gained  a  surprising 
repose. 

Now,  for  example,  she  sat  in  a  huge  chair 
cushioned  with  black  leather  and  thought,  with 
a  frowning  brow,  of  her  mother.  It  was  clear 
that  the  latter  was  obviously  worried  about — to 
put  it  frankly — her  face.  Her  figure,  she  re 
peatedly  asserted,  could  be  reasoned  with;  she 
had  always  been  reconciled  to  a  certain  jolly 
stoutness,  but  her  face,  the  lines  that  appeared 
about  her  eyes  overnight,  fairly  drove  her  to  hot 
indiscreet  tears.  She  had  been  to  see  about  it, 
Linda  knew ;  and  returned  from  numerous  beauty- 
parlors  marvelously  rejuvenated — for  the  eve 
ning. 

She  had  been  painted,  enameled,,  vibrated, 
massaged;  she  had  had  electric  treatment,  rays 

[53] 


LINDA   CONDON 

and  tissue  builders ;  and  once  she  had  been  baked. 
To-day  the  toilet  table  would  be  loaded  with 
milkweed,  cerates  and  vanishing  cream;  tomor 
row  they  would  all  be  swept  away,  given  to  de 
lighted  chambermaids,  while  Mrs.  Condon  de 
clared  that,  when  all  was  said,  cold  water  and  a 
rough  towel  was  nature's  way. 

This  afternoon,  apparently  everything,  includ 
ing  hope,  had  failed.  She  was  as  cross  as  cross. 
From  the  manner  in  which  she  spoke  it  might 
have  been  Linda's  fault.  The  worst  of  it  was 
that  even  the  latter  saw  that  nothing  could  be 
done.  Her  mother  was  growing — well,  a  little 
tired  in  appearance.  Swift  tears  gathered  in 
Linda's  eyes.  She  hadn't  been  quite  truthful  in 
that  reassuring  speech  of  hers.  She  set  herself 
to  the  examination  of  various  older  women  with 
whom  she  had  more  or  less  lately  come  in  contact. 
How  had  they  regarded  and  met  the  loss  of  what 
ever  good  looks  they  had  possessed? 

It  was  terribly  mixed  up,  but,  as  she  thought 
about  it,  it  seemed  to  her  that  the  world  of  women 
was  divided  into  two  entirely  different  groups, 
the  ones  men  liked,  and  who  had  such  splendid 
parties;  and  the  ones  who  sat  together  and  gos 
siped  in  sharp  lowered  voices.  She  hoped  pas- 

[54] 


LINDA   CONDON 

sionately  that  her  mother  would  not  become  one 
of  the  latter  for  a  long  long  while.  But  even 
tually  it  seemed  that  there  was  no  escape  from  the 
circle  of  brilliantly  dressed  creatures  with  ruined 
faces  who  congregated  in  the  hotels  and  whis 
pered  and  nodded  in  company  until  they  went 
severally  to  bed. 

The  great  difference  between  one  and  the  other, 
of  course,  was  the  favor  of  men.  Their  world 
revolved  about  that  overwhelming  fact.  Her 
mother  had  informed  her  of  this  on  a  hundred 
occasions  and  in  countless  ways ;  but  more  by  her 
actions,  her  present  wretchedness,  than  by  speech. 
It  was  perfectly  clear  to  Linda  that  nothing  else 
mattered.  She  was  even  beginning,  in  a  vague 
way,  to  think  of  it  in  connection  with  herself; 
but  still  most  of  her  preoccupation  was  in  her 
mother.  She  decided  gravely  that  a  great  deal, 
yet,  could  be  done.  For  instance,  lunch  to-day: 

Her  mother  had  given  her  a  birthday  celebra 
tion  at  Henri's,  the  famous  confectioner  but  a 
door  or  two  from  their  hotel;  and  at  the  end, 
when  a  plate  of  the  most  amazing  and  delightful 
little  cakes  had  been  set  on  the  table,  the  elder 
had  eaten  more  than  half.  Afterwards  she  had 
sworn  ruefully  at  her  lack  of  character,  begging 

[55] 


LINDA    CONDON 

Linda — in  a  momentary  return  of  former  happy 
companionship — never  to  let  her  make  such  a 
silly  pig  of  herself  again.  Then  she  got  so  tired, 
Linda  continued  her  mental  deliberations;  if  she 
could  only  rest,  go  away  from  cities  and  resorts 
for  a  number  of  months,  the  lines  in  turn  would 
soon  vanish. 

The  elder  moved  impatiently,  with  a  fretful  ex 
clamation,  in  the  inner  room;  from  outside  came 
the  subdued  dull  ceaseless  clamor  of  New  York. 
Formerly  it  had  frightened  Linda ;  but  her  dread 
had  become  a  wordless  excitement  at  the  thought 
of  so  much  just  beyond  the  windows;  her  hands 
grew  cold  and  her  heart  suddenly  pounded,  de 
stroying  the  vicarious  image  of  her  mother. 


[56] 


I 


VI 

"T"  WISH  now  I'd  been  different,"  Mrs. 
Condon  said,  standing  in  the  door.  Her 
dress  was  not  yet  on,  but  her  underthings 
were  fully  as  elaborate  and  shimmering  as  any 
gown  could  hope  to  be.  "And  above  everything 
else,  I  am  sorry  for  the  kind  of  mother  you've 
had."  This  was  so  unexpected,  the  other's  voice 
was  so  unhappy,  that  Linda  was  startled.  She 
hurried  across  the  room  and  laid  a  slim  palm  on 
her  mother's  full  bare  arm.  "Don't  say  that," 
Linda  begged,  distressed;  "you've  been  the  best  in 
the  world." 

"You  know  nothing  about  it,"  the  elder  re 
turned,  momentarily  seated,  her  hands  clasped  on 
her  full  silken  lap.  "But  perhaps  it's  not  too 
late.  You  ought  to  go  to  a  good  school,  where 
you'd  learn  everything,  but  principally  what  a 
bad  thoughtless  mama  you  have." 

"I  shouldn't  stay  a  second  in  a  place  where 
they  said  that,"  Linda  declared.  A  new  appre 
hension  touched  her.  "You're  not  really  think- 

[57] 


LINDA   CONDON 

ing  of  sending  me  away!"  she  cried.  "Why, 
you  simply  could  not  get  along.  You  know  you 
couldn't!  The  maids  never  do  up  your  dresses 
right;  and  you'd  be  so  lonely  in  the  mornings  you 
would  nearly  die." 

"That's  true,"  Mrs.  Condon  admitted  wearily. 
"I  would  expire;  but  I  was  thinking  of  you — 
you're  only  beginning  life;  and  the  start  you'll 
get  with  me  is  all  wrong.  Or,  anyway,  most 
people  think  so." 

"They  are  only  jealous." 

"Will  you  go  into  the  closet,  darling,  and  pour 
out  a  teeny  little  sip  from  my  flask;  mama  feels 
a  thousand  years  old  this  evening." 

Returning  with  the  silver  cup  of  the  flask 
half  full  of  pale  pungent  brandy  Linda  could 
scarcely  keep  the  tears  from  spilling  over  her 
cheeks.  She  had  never  before  felt  so  sad.  Her 
mother  hastily  drank,  the  stinging  odor  was  trans 
ferred  to  her  lips;  and  there  was  a  palpable  re 
covery  of  her  customary  spirit. 

"I  don't  know  what  gets  over  me,"  she  asserted. 
"I'm  certain,  from  what  I've  heard  of  them,  that 
you  wouldn't  be  a  bit  better  off  in  one  of  those 
fashionable  schools  for  girls.  Women,  young 
and  older,  were  never  meant  to  be  a  lot  together 

[58] 


LINDA   CONDON 

in  one  place.  It's  unnatural.  They  don't  like 
each  other,  ever,  and  it's  all  hypocritical  and 
nasty.  You  will  get  more  from  life,  yes,  and 
me.  I'm  honest,  too  honest  for  my  own  good,  if 
the  truth  was  known." 

She  rose  and  unconsciously  strayed  to  the  mir 
ror  over  the  mantel  where  she  examined  her  coun 
tenance  in  absorbed  detail. 

"My  skin  is  getting  soft  like  putty,"  she  re 
marked  aloud  to  herself.  "The  thing  is,  I've  had 
my  time  and  don't  want  to  pay  for  it.  Blondes 
go  quicker  than  dark  women;  you  ought  to  last 
a  long  while,  Linda."  Mrs.  Condon  had  turned, 
and  her  tone  was  again  almost  complaining,  al 
most  ill-natured.  Linda  considered  this  infor 
mation  with  a  troubled  face.  It  was  quite  clear 
that  it  made  her  mother  cross.  "I've  seen  men 
stop  and  look  at  you  right  now,  too,  and  you 
nothing  more  than  a  slip  fourteen  years  old.  Of 
course,  when  I  was  fifteen  I  had  a  proposal;  but 
I  was  very  forward;  and  somehow  you're  differ 
ent — so  dam'  serious." 

She  couldn't  help  it,  Linda  thought,  if  she 
was  serious;  she  really  had  a  great  deal  to  think 
about,  their  income  among  other  things.  If  she 
didn't  watch  it,  pay  the  bills  every  three  months 

[59] 


LINDA    CONDON 

when  it  arrived,  her  mother  would  never  have  a 
dollar  in  the  gold  mesh  bag.  Then,  lately,  the 
dresses  the  elder  threatened  to  buy  were  often  im 
possible;  Linda  learned  this  from  the  comments 
she  heard  after  the  wearing  of  evening  affairs 
sent  home  against  her  earnest  protests.  They 
were,  other  women  more  discreetly  gowned  had 
agreed,  ridiculous. 

Linda  calmly  realized  that  in  this  her  judg 
ment  was  superior  to  her  mother's.  In  other 
ways,  too,  she  felt  she  was  really  the  elder;  and 
her  dismay  at  the  possibility  of  going  away  to 
school  had  been  mostly  made  up  of  the  realization 
of  how  much  her  mother's  well-being  was  de 
pendent  on  her. 

Mrs.  Condon,  finishing  her  dressing  in  the 
bedroom,  at  times  called  out  various  injunctions, 
general  or  immediate.  "Tell  them  to  have  a  taxi 
at  the  door  for  seven  sharp.  Have  you  talked  to 
that  little  girl  in  the  black  velvet?"  Linda  hadn't 
and  made  a  mental  note  to  avoid  her  more  point 
edly  in  the  future.  "Get  out  mother's  carriage 
boots  from  the  hall  closet;  no,  the  others — you 
know  I  don't  wear  the  black  with  coral  stockings. 
They  come  off  and  the  fur  sticks  to  my  legs.  It 
will  be  very  gay  to-night;  I  hope  to  heaven 

[60] 


LINDA    CONDON 

Ross  doesn't  take  too  much  again."  Linda  well 
remembered  that  the  last  time  Ross  had  taken 
too  much  her  mother's  Directoire  wrap  had  been 
completely  torn  in  half.  "There,  it  is  all  non 
sense  about  my  fading;  I  look  as  well  as  I  ever 
did." 

Mrs.  Condon  stood  before  her  daughter  like  a 
large  flame-pink  tulle  flower.  Her  bright  gold 
hair  was  constrained  by  black  gauze  knotted 
behind,  her  bare  shoulders  were  like  powdered 
rosy  marble  and  the  floating  skirts  gathered  in 
a  hand  showed  marvelously  small  satin-tied  car 
riage  boots.  Indeed  Linda's  exclamation  of  de 
light  was  entirely  frank.  She  had  never  seen  her 
mother  more  radiant.  The  cunningly  applied 
rouge,  the  enhanced  brilliancy  of  her  long-lashed 
eyes,  had  perfectly  the  illusion  of  unspent  beauty. 

"Do  stay  down-stairs  after  dinner  and  play," 
the  elder  begged.  "And  if  you  want  to  go  to  the 
theatre,  ask  Mr.  Bendix,  at  the  desk,  to  send  you 
with  that  chauffeur  we  have  had  so  much.  I 
positively  forbid  your  leaving  the  hotel  else. 
It's  a  comfort  after  all,  that  you  are  serious. 
Kiss  mama — " 

However,  she  descended  with  her  mother  in 
the  elevator;  there  was  a  more  public  caress;  and 

[61] 


LINDA    CONDON 

the  captain  in  the  Chinese  dining-room  placed 
Linda  at  a  small  table  against  the  wall.  There 
she  had  clams — she  adored  iced  clams — creamed 
shrimps  and  oysters  with  potatoes  bordure, 
alligator-pear  salad  and  a  beautiful  charlotte 
cream  with  black  walnuts.  After  this  she  se 
dately  instructed  the  captain  what  to  sign  on  the 
back  of  the  dinner  check — Linda  Condon,  room 
five  hundred  and  seven — placed  thirty-five  cents 
beside  the  finger-bowl  for  the  waiter,  and  made 
her  way  out  to  the  news  stand  and  the  talkative 
girl  who  had  it  in  charge.  Exhausting  the  pos 
sibilities  of  gossip,  and  deciding  not  to  go  out  to 
the  theatre — in  spite  of  the  news  girl's  exciting 
description  of  a  play  called  "The  New  Sin" — she 
was  walking  irresolutely  through  the  high  gilded 
and  marble  assemblage  space  when,  unfortu 
nately,  she  was  captured  by  Mr.  Moses  Feldt. 


[62] 


VII 

HE  led  her  to  a  high-backed  lounge 
against  the  wall,  where,  seated  on  its 
extreme  edge,  he  gazed  silently  at  her 
with  an  expression  of  sentimental  concern.  Mr. 
Moses  Feldt  was  a  short  round  man,  bald  but 
for  a  fluffy  rim  of  pale  hair,  and  with  the  palest 
imaginable  eyes  in  a  countenance  perpetually 
flushed  by  the  physical  necessity  of  accommodat 
ing  his  rotundity  to  awkward  edges  and  condi 
tions.  As  usual  he  was  dressed  with  the  nicest 
care — a  band  of  white  linen  laid  in  the  opening 
of  his  waistcoat,  his  scarf  ornamented  by  a  pear- 
shaped  pearl  on  a  diamond  finished  stem;  his 
cloth-topped  varnished  black  shoes  glistened, 
while  his  short  fat  fingers  clasped  a  prodigious 
unlighted  cigar.  At  last,  in  a  tone  exactly  suited 
to  his  gaze,  he  exclaimed: 

"So  that  naughty  mama  has  gone  out  again 
and  deserted  Moses  and  her  little  Linda!"  In 
what  way  her  mother  had  deserted  Mr.  Feldt  she 
failed  to  understand.  Of  course  he  wanted  to 

[63] 


LINDA   CONDON 

marry  them — the  comprehensive  phrase  was  his 
own — but  that  didn't  include  him  in  whatever 
they  did.  Principally  it  made  a  joke  for  their 
private  entertainment.  Mrs.  Condon  would 
mimic  his  eager  manner,  "Stella,  let  me  take  you 
both  home  where  you'll  have  the  best  in  the  land," 
And,  "Ladies  like  you  ought  to  have  a  loving  pro 
tection."  Linda  would  laugh  in  her  cool  bell- 
like  manner,  and  her  mother  add  a  satirical  com 
ment  on  the  chance  any  Moses  Feldt  had  of  mar 
rying  her. 

Linda  at  once  found  him  ridiculous  and  a  be 
ing  who  forced  a  slighting  warmth  of  liking. 
His  appearance  was  preposterous,  the  ready 
emotion  often  too  foolish  for  words;  but  under 
neath  there  was  a — a  goodness,  a  mysterious 
quality  that  stirred  her  heart  to  recognition. 
Certain  rare  things  in  life  and  experience  affected 
her  like  that  memory  of  an  old  happiness.  She 
could  never  say  what  they  might  be,  they  came 
at  the  oddest  times  and  by  the  most  extraordinary 
means;  but  at  their  occurrence  she  would  thrill 
for  a  moment  as  if  in  response  to  a  sound  of 
music. 

It  was,  for  example,  absurd  that  Mr.  Moses 
Feldt,  who  was  a  Jew,  should  make  her  feel  like 

[64] 


LINDA    CONDON 

that,  but  he  did.  And  all  the  while  that  she  was 
disagreeable  to  him,  or  mocking  him  behind  his 
back,  she  was  as  uncomfortable  and  "horrid"  as 
possible.  While  this  fact,  of  course,  only  served 
to  make  her  horrider  still.  At  present  she 
adopted  the  manner  of  a  patience  that  nothing 
could  quite  exhaust;  she  was  polite  and  formal, 
relentlessly  correct  in  position. 

Mr.  Moses  Feldt,  the  cigar  in  his  grasp,  pressed 
a  hand  to  the  probable  region  of  his  heart.  "You 
don't  know  how  I  think  of  you,"  he  protested, 
tears  in  his  eyes;  "just  the  idea  of  you  exposed 
to  anything  at  all  in  hotels  keeps  me  awake 
nights.  Now  it's  a  drunk,  or  a  fresh  feller  on  the 
elevator,  or — " 

"It's  nice  of  you,"  Linda  said,  "but  you 
needn't  worry.  No  one  would  dare  to  bother  us. 
No  one  ever  has." 

"You  wouldn't  know  it  if  they  did,"  he  replied 
despondently,  "at  your  age.  And  then  your 
mother  is  so  trustful  and  pleasant.  Take  those 
parties  where  she  is  so  much — roof  frolics  and 
cocoanut  groves  and  submarine  cafes;  they  don't 
come  to  any  good.  Rowdy."  Linda  studied 
him  coldly;  if  he  criticized  them  further  she 
would  leave.  He  mopped  a  shining  brow  with 

[65] 


LINDA   CONDON 

a  large  colorful  silk  handkerchief.     "It  throws 
me  into  a  sweat,"  he  admitted. 

"Really,  Mr.  Feldt,  you  mustn't  bother,"  she 
told  him  in  one  of  her  few  impulses  of  friend 
liness.  "You  see,  we  are  very  experienced." 
He  nodded  without  visible  happiness  at  this 
truth.  "I'm  a  jackass! "  he  cried.  "Judith  tells 
me  that  all  the  time.  If  you  could  only  see  my 
daughters,"  he  continued  with  a  new  vigor;  "such 
lovely  girls  as  they  are.  One  dark  like  you  and 
the  other  fair  as  a  daisy.  Judith  and  Pansy. 
And  my  home  that  darling  mama  made  before 
she  died."  The  handkerchief  was  again  in  evi 
dence. 

"Women  and  girls  are  funny.  I  can't  get  you 
there  and  not  for  nothing  will  Judith  make  a 
step.  It  may  be  pride  but  it  seems  to  me  such 
nonsense.  I  guess  I'm  old-fashioned  and  love's 
old-fashioned.  Homes  have  gone  out  of  style 
with  the  rest.  It's  all  these  restaurants  and  roofs 
now,  yes,  and  studios.  I  tell  the  girls  to  stay 
away  from  them  and  from  artists  and  so  on.  I 
don't  encourage  them  at  the  apartment — a  big 
lump  of  a  feller  with  platinum  bracelets  on  his 
wrists.  What  kind  of  a  man  would  that  be! 
I'd  like  to  know  who'd  buy  goods  from  him. 

[66] 


LINDA   CONDON 

"Sometimes,  I'm  sorry  I  got  a  lot  of  money, 
but  it  made  mama  happy.  When  she  laid  there 
at  the  last  sick  and  couldn't  live,  I  said,  'Oh,  if 
you  only  won't  leave  me  I'll  give  you  gold  to 
eat.'  "  He  was  so  moved,  his  face  so  red,  that 
Linda  grew  acutely  embarrassed.  People  were 
looking  at  them.  She  rose  stiffly  but,  in  spite  of 
her  effort  to  escape  him,  he  caught  both  her  hands 
in  his : 

"You  say  I'm  an  old  idiot  like  Judith,"  he 
begged.  This  Linda  declined  to  do.  And,  "Ask 
your  mother  if  you  won't  come  to  dinner  with  the 
girls  and  me,  cozy  and  at  home — just  once." 

"I'm  afraid  it  will  do  no  good,"  she  admitted; 
"but  I'll  try."  She  realized  that  he  was  about 
to  kiss  her  and  moved  quickly  back.  "I  am  al 
most  afraid  of  you,"  he  told  her;  "you're  so  dis 
tant  and  elegant.  Judith  and  Pansy  would  get 
on  with  you  first  rate.  I'll  telephone  tomorrow, 
in  the  afternoon.  If  the  last  flowers  I  sent  you 
came  I  never  heard  of  it." 

She  thanked  him  appropriately  for  the  roses 
and  stood,  erect  and  impersonal,  as  a  man  in  the 
hotel  livery  helped  him  into  a  coat.  Mr.  Moses 
Feldt  waved  the  still  unlighted  cigar  at  her  and 
disappeared  through  the  rotating  door  to  the  street. 

[67] 


LINDA    CONDON 

She  gave  a  half-affected  sigh  of  relief.  Couldn't 
he  see  that  her  mother  would  never  marry  him. 
At  the  same  time  the  strange  thrill  touched  her; 
the  sense  of  his  absurdity  vanished  and  she  no 
longer  remembered  him  perched  like  a  painted 
rubber  ball  on  the  edge  of  the  lounge. 

In  the  somber  red  plush  and  varnished  wood 
of  the  reception-room  of  their  suite  he  seemed 
again  charming.  Perhaps  it  was  because  he, 
too,  adored  her  mother.  That  wasn't  the  reason. 
The  familiar  rare  joy  lingered.  It  seemed  now 
as  though  she  were  to  capture  and  understand  it 
.  .  .  there  was  the  vibration  of  music;  and  then, 
as  always,  she  felt  at  once  sad  and  brave.  But,  in 
spite  of  her  old  effort  to  the  contrary,  the  feeling 
died  away.  Some  day  it  would  be  clear  to  her; 
in  the  meanwhile  Mr.  Moses  Feldt  became  once 
more  only  ridiculous. 


[68] 


VIII 

IN  the  morning  she  was  dressed  and  had 
returned  from  breakfast  before  her  mother 
stirred.  The  latter  moved  sharply,  brought 
an  arm  up  over  her  head,  and  swore.  It  was  a 
long  while  before  she  got  up  or  spoke  again,  and 
Linda  never  remembered  her  in  a  worse  temper. 
When,  finally,  she  came  into  the  room  where  the 
breakfast-tray  was  laid,  Linda  was  inexpressibly 
shocked — all  that  her  mother  had  dreaded  about 
her  appearance  had  come  disastrously  true.  Her 
face  was  hung  with  shadows  like  smudges  of  dirt 
and  her  eyes  were  netted  with  lines. 

Examining  the  dishes  with  distaste  she  told 
Linda  that  positively  she  could  slap  her  for  let 
ting  them  bring  up  orange- juice.  "How  often 
must  I  explain  to  you  that  it  freezes  my  fingers." 
Linda  replied  that  she  had  repeated  this  in  the 
breakfast-room  and  perhaps  they  had  the  wrong 
order.  Neither  her  mother  nor  she  said  anything 
more  until  Mrs.  Condon  had  finished  her  coffee 
and  started  a  second  cigarette.  Then  Linda  re 
lated  something  of  Mr.  Moses  Feldt's  call  on  the 

[69] 


LINDA   CONDON 

evening  before.  "He  cried  right  into  his  hand 
kerchief,"  she  said,  "until  I  thought  I  should 
sink." 

Mrs.  Condon  eyed  her  daughter  speculatively. 
"Now  if  you  were  only  four  years  older/'  she  de 
clared,  "it  would  be  a  good  thing.  He  was 
simply  born  to  be  a  husband."  Horror  filled 
Linda  at  the  other's  implication.  "Yes,"  the 
elder  insisted;  "you  couldn't  do  better;  except, 
perhaps,  for  those  girls  of  his.  But  then  you'd 
have  no  trouble  making  them  miserable.  It's 
time  to  talk  to  you  seriously  about  marriage." 
The  smoke  from  the  cigarette  eddied  in  a  gray 
veil  across  her  unrefreshed  face. 

"You're  old  for  your  age,  Linda;  your  life  has 
made  you  that;  and,  like  I  said  last  night,  it  is 
rather  better  than  not.  Well,  for  you  marriage, 
and  soon  as  possible,  is  the  proper  thing.  Mind, 
I  have  never  said  a  word  against  it;  only  what 
suits  one  doesn't  suit  another.  Where  it  wouldn't 
be  anything  more  than  an  old  ladies'  home  to  me 
you  need  it  early  and  plenty.  You  are  too  in 
tense.  That  doesn't  go  in  the  world/  Men  don't 
like  it.  They  want  their  pleasure  and  comfort 
without  strings  tied  to  them;  the  intensity  has  to 
be  theirs. 

[70] 


LINDA   CONDON 

"What  you  must  get  through  your  head  is  that 
love — whatever  it  is — and  marriage  are  two  dif 
ferent  things,  and  if  you  are  going  to  be  success 
ful  they  must  be  kept  separated)  You  can't  do 
anything  with  a  man  if  you  love  him;  but  then 
you  can't  do  anything  with  him  if  he  doesn't  love 
you.  That's  the  whole  thing  in  a  breath.  I  am 
not  crying  down  love,  either;  only  I  don't  want 
you  to  think  it  is  the  bread  and  butter  while  it's 
nothing  more  than  those  little  sweet  cakes  at 
Henri's. 

"Now  any  girl  who  marries  a  poor  man  or  for 
love — they  are  the  same  thing — is  a  fool  and  de 
serves  what  she  gets.  No  one  thanks  her  for  it, 
him  least  of  all;  because  if  she  does  love  him  it 
is  only  to  make  them  miserable.  She's  always  at 
him — where  did  he  go  and  why  did  he  stay  so 
long,  and  no  matter  what  he  says  she  knows  it's 
a  lie.  More  times  than  not  she's  right,  too.  I 
can't  tell  you  too  often — men  don't  want  to  be 
loved,  they  like  to  be  flattered  and  flattered  and 
then  flattered  again.  You'd  never  believe  how 
childish  they  are. 

"Make  them  think  they're  it  and  don't  give  too 
much — that's  the  secret.  Above  all  else  don't  be 
easy  on  them.  Don't  say  'all  right,  darling,  next 

[71] 


LINDA    CONDON 

spring  will  do  as  well  for  a  new  suit/  Get  it 
then  and  let  him  worry  about  paying  for  it,  if 
worry  he  must.  If  they  don't  give  it  to  you  some 
one  smarter  will  wear  it.  But  I  started  to  talk 
about  getting  married. 

"  Choose  a  Moses  Feldt,  who  will  always  be 
grateful  to  you,  and  keep  him  at  it.  They  are  so 
easy  to  land  it's  a  kind  of  shame,  too.  Perhaps  I 
am  telling  you  this  too  soon,  but  I  don't  want 
any  mistakes.  Well,  pick  out  your  Moses — and 
mama  will  help  you  there — and  suddenly,  at  the 
right  time,  show  him  that  you  can  be  affectionate ; 
surprise  him  with  it  and  you  so  staid  and  par 
ticular  generally.  Don't  overdo  it,  promise  more 
than  you  ever  give — 

"In  the  closet,  dearie,  just  a  little.  That's  a 
good  girl.  Mama's  so  dry."  She  rose,  the  silver 
cup  of  the  flask  in  her  hand,  and  moved  inevitably 
to  the  mirror.  "My  hair's  a  sight,"  she  re 
marked;  "all  strings.  I  believe  I'll  get  a  per 
manent  wave.  They  say  it  lasts  for  six  months  or 
more,  till  the  ends  grow  out.  Makes  a  lot  of 
it,  too,  and  holds  the  front  together.  If  you've 
ever  had  dye  in  your  hair,  I  hear,  it  will  break 
off  like  grass." 

Linda  pondered  over  what  she  had  been  told 
[72] 


LINDA    CONDON 

of  love  and  marriage ;  on  the  whole  the  exposition 
had  been  unsatisfactory.  The  latter  she  was 
able  to  grasp,  but  her  mother  had  admitted  an 
inability  exactly  to  fix  love.  (One  fact,  appar 
ently,  was  clear — it  was  a  nuisance  and  a  hin 
drance  to  happiness,  or  rather  to  success.  Love 
upset  things.)  Still  she  had  the  strongest  objec 
tion  possible  to  living  forever  with  a  man  like 
Mr.  Moses  Feldt.  At  once  all  that  she  had  hoped 
for  from  life  grew  flat  and  uninteresting.  She 
had  no  doubt  of  her  mother's  correctness  and  wis 
dom;  the  world  was  like  that;  she  must  make  the 
best  of  it. 

There  was  some  telephoning,  inquiries,  and 
she  heard  the  elder  make  an  appointment  with  a 
hair-dresser  for  three  that  afternoon.  She  won 
dered  what  it  would  be  like  to  have  your  hair 
permanently  waved  and  hoped  that  she  would 
see  it  done.  This,  too,  she  realized,  was  a  part 
of  the  necessity  of  always  considering  men — they 
liked  your  hair  to  be  wavy.  Hers  was  as  straight 
and  stupid  as  possible.  She,  in  turn,  examined 
herself  in  a  mirror :  the  black  bang  fell  exactly  to 
her  eyebrows,  her  face  had  no  color  other  than 
the  carnation  of  her  lips  and  her  deep  blue 
eyes.  She  moved  away  and  critically  studied  her 

[73] 


LINDA   CONDON 

figure;  inches  and  inches  too  thin,  she  decided. 
Undoubtedly  her  mother  was  right,  and  she  must 
marry  at  the  first  opportunity — if  she  could  find 
a  man,  a  rich  man,  who  was  willing. 

Her  thoughts  returned  vaguely  to  the  mystery, 
the  nuisance,  of  love.  Surely  she  had  heard 
something  before,  immensely  important,  about  it, 
and  totally  different  from  all  her  mother  had  said. 
Her  mind  was  filled  with  the  fantastic  image  of  a 
forest,  of  dangers,  and  a  fat  china  figure  with 
curled  plumes,  a  nodding  head,  that  brushed  her 
with  fear  and  disgust.  A  shuddering  panic  took 
possession  of  her,  flashes  burned  before  her  eyes, 
and  she  ran  gasping  to  the  perfumed  soft  reassur 
ances  of  her  mother. 


[74] 


IX 

N  a  recurrence  of  her  surprising  concern  of 
the  day  before  Mrs.  Condon  declined  to 
leave  her  dearest  Linda  alone;  and,  their 
arms  caught  together  in  a  surging  affection,  they 
walked  down  Fifth  Avenue  toward  the  hair 
dresser's.  There  was  a  diffused  gray  sparkle  of 
sunlight — it  was  early  for  the  throngs — through 
which  they  passed  rapidly  to  the  accompaniment 
of  a  rapid  eager  chatter.  Linda  wore  a  deep 
smooth  camel's  hair  cape,  over  which  her  intense 
black  hair  poured  like  ink,  and  her  face  was 
shaded  by  a  dipping  green  velvet  hat.  Her 
mother,  in  one  of  the  tightly  cut  suits  she  affected, 
had  never  been  more  like  a  perfect  companion. 

They  saw,  in  the  window  of  a  store  for  men,  a 
set  of  violent  purple  wool  underwear,  and  barely 
escaped  hysterics  at  the  thought  of  Mr.  Moses 
Feldt  in  such  a  garb.  They  giggled  idiotically 
at  the  spectacle  of  a  countryman  fearfully  making 
the  sharp  descent  from  the  top  of  a  lurching  omni 
bus.  And  then,  when  they  had  reached  the  place 

[75] 


LINDA    CONDON 

of  Mrs.  Condon's  appointment,  stopped  at  the 
show  of  elaborately  waved  hair  on  wax  heads  and 
chose  which,  probably,  would  resemble  the  elder 
and  which,  in  a  very  short  while  now,  Linda. 

There  was  an  impressive  interior,  furnished  in 
gray  panels  and  silvery  wood;  and  the  young 
woman  at  the  desk  was  more  surprisingly  waved 
than  anything  they  had  yet  seen.  M.  Joseph 
would  be  ready  almost  immediately;  and  in  the 
meanwhile  Mrs.  Condon  could  lay  aside  her 
things  in  preparation  for  the  hair  to  be  washed. 
She  did  this  while  Linda  followed  every  move 
ment  with  the  deepest  interest. 

At  the  back  of  the  long  room  was  a  succession 
of  small  alcoves,  each  with  an  important-looking 
chair  and  mirror  and  shelves,  a  white  basin, 
water-taps  and  rubber  tubes.  Settled  in  com 
fort,  Mrs.  Condon's  hair  was  spread  out  in  a 
bright  metal  tray  fastened  to  the  back  of  the  chair, 
and  the  attendant,  a  moist  tired  girl  in  a  care 
less  waist,  sprayed  the  short  thick  gold-colored 
strands. 

"My,"  she  observed,  "what  some  wouldn't  give 
for  your  shade !  Never  been  touched,  I  can  see, 
either.  A  lady  comes  in  with  real  Titian,  but 
yours  is  more  select.  It  positively  is.  Lillian 

[76] 


LINDA    CONDON 

Russell."  While  she  talked  her  hands  sped  with 
incredible  rapidity  and  skill.  "The  gentlemen 
don't  notice  it ;  of  course  not;  oh,  no !  There  was 
a  girl  here,  a  true  blonde,  but  she  didn't  stay  long 
— her  own  car,  yes,  indeed.  Married  her  right 
out  of  the  establishment.  There  wasn't  any 
nonsense  to  her. 

"So  this  is  your  little  girl!  I'd  never  have  be 
lieved  it.  Not  that  she  hasn't  a  great  deal  of 
style,  a  great  deal — almost,  you  might  say,  like 
an  Egyptian.  In  the  movies  last  night;  her  all 
over.  It's  a  type  that  will  need  studying. 
Bertha  Kalich.  But  for  me—" 

Already,  Linda  saw,  this  part  of  the  operation 
was  done.  The  girl  wheeled  into  position  a  case 
that  had  a  fan  and  ring  of  blue  flickering  flames, 
and  a  cupped  tube  through  which  hot  air  was 
poured  over  her  mother's  head.  M.  Joseph 
strutted  in,  a  small  carefully  dressed  man  with 
a  diminutive  pointed  gray  beard  and  formal 
curled  mustache.  He  spoke  with  what  Linda 
supposed  was  a  French  accent,  and  his  manners, 
at  least  to  them,  were  beautiful.  But  because  the 
girl  had  not  put  out  the  blue  flames  quickly 
enough  he  turned  to  her  with  a  voice  of  quivering 
rage. 

[77] 


LINDA    CONDON 

It  was  so  unexpected,  in  the  middle  of  his  bow 
ing  and  smooth  assurances,  that  Linda  was 
startled,  and  had  to  think  about  him  all  over. 
The  result  of  this  was  a  surprising  dislike;  she 
hated,  even,  to  see  him  touch  her  mother,  as  he 
unnecessarily  did  in  directing  them  into  the  en 
closure  for  the  permanent  wave. 

The  place  itself  filled  her  with  the  faint  horror 
of  instruments  and  the  unknown.  Above  the 
chair  where  Mrs.  Condon  now  sat  there  was  a 
circle  in  the  ceiling  like  the  base  of  a  chandelier 
and  hanging  down  from  it  on  twisted  green  wires 
were  a  great  number  of  the  strangest  things 
imaginable:  they  were  as  thick  as  her  wrist,  but 
round,  longer  and  hollow,  white  china  inside  and 
covered  with  brown  wrapping.  The  wires  of 
each,  she  discovered,  led  over  a  little  wheel  and 
down  again  to  a  swinging  clock-like  weight.  In 
addition  to  this  there  were  strange  depressing 
handles  on  the  wall  by  a  dial  with  a  jiggling 
needle  and  clearly  marked  numbers. 

The  skill  of  the  girl  who  had  washed  her 
mother's  hair,  however,  was  slight  compared  with 
M.  Joseph's  dexterity.  The  comb  flashed  in  his 
white  narrow  hands ;  in  no  time  at  all  every  knot 
was  urged  out  into  a  shining  smoothness.  "Just 

[78] 


LINDA   CONDON 

the  front?"  he  inquired.  Not  waiting  for  Mrs. 
Condon's  reply,  he  detached  >a  strand  from  the 
mass  over  her  brow,  impaled  it  on  a  hairpin,  while 
he  picked  up  what  might  have  been  a  thick  steel 
knitting-needle  with  one  end  fastened  in  the  mid 
dle  of  a  silver  quarter.  The  latter,  it  developed, 
had  a  hole  in  it,  through  which  he  drew  the  strand 
of  hair,  and  then  wrapped  it  with  an  angry  tight 
ness  about  the  long  projection. 

At  this  exact  moment  a  new  girl,  but  tired  and 
moist,  appeared,  took  a  hank  of  white  threads 
from  a  dressing-table,  and  tied  that  separate  lock 
firmly.  This,  Linda  counted,  was  repeated 
fifteen  times;  and  when  it  was  accomplished  she 
was  unable  to  repress  a  nervous  laughter. 
Really,  her  mother  looked  too  queer  for  words: 
the  long  rigid  projections  stood  out  all  over  her 
head  like — like  a  huge  pincushion;  no,  it  was  a 
porcupine.  Mrs.  Condon  smiled  in  uncertain 
recognition  of  her  daughter's  mirth. 

Then  Linda's  attention  followed  M.  Joseph  to 
a  table  against  a  partition,  where  he  secured  a 
white  cotton  strip  from  a  film  of  them  soaking  in 
a  shallow  tray,  took  up  some  white  powder  on  the 
blade  of  a  dessert  knife  and  transferred  it  to  the 
strip.  This  he  wrapped  and  wrapped  about  the 

[79] 


LINDA    CONDON 

hair  fastened  on  a  spindle,  tied  it  in  turn,  and 
dragged  down  one  of  the  brown  objects  on  wires, 
which,  to  Linda's  great  astonishment,  fitted  pre 
cisely  over  the  cotton-bound  hair.  Again,  fifteen 
times,  M.  Joseph  did  this,  fastening  each  con 
nection  with  the  turn  of  a  screw.  When  so  much 
was  accomplished  her  mother's  hair,  it  seemed, 
had  grown  fast  to  the  ceiling  in  a  tangle  of  green 
ends.  It  was  the  most  terrifying  spectacle  Linda 
had  ever  witnessed.  Obscure  thoughts  of  tor 
ture,  of  criminals  executed  by  electricity,  froze  her 
in  a  set  apprehension. 

The  hair-dresser  stepped  over  to  the  dials  on 
the  wall,  and,  with  a  sharp  comprehensive  glance 
at  his  apparatus,  moved  a  handle  as  far  as  it 
would  go.  Nothing  immediately  happened,  and 
Linda  gave  a  relaxing  sigh  of  relief.  M.  Joseph, 
however,  became  full  of  a  painful  attention. 


[80] 


HE  brought  into  view  an  unsuspected 
tube,  with  a  cone  of  paper  at  its  end, 
and  bent  over  her  mother,  directing  a 
stream  of  cold  air  against  her  head.  "How  do 
you  feel?"  he  asked,  with,  Linda  noticed,  a  star 
tling  loss  of  his  first  accent.  Mrs.  Condon  so  far 
felt  well  enough.  Then,  before  Linda's  startled 
gaze,  every  single  one  of  the  fifteen  imprisoning 
tubes  began  to  steam  with  an  extraordinary  vigor ; 
not  only  did  they  steam,  like  teapots,  but  drops 
of  water  formed  and  slowly  slid  over  her  mother's 
face.  If  the  process  appeared  weird  at  the  be 
ginning,  now  it  was  utterly  fantastic. 

The  little  white  vapor  spurts  played  about  Mrs. 
Condon's  dripping  countenance;  they  increased 
rather  than  diminished;  actually  it  resembled  a 
wrecked  locomotive  she  had  once  seen.  "How 
are  you?"  M.  Joseph  demanded  nervously.  "Is 
it  hot  anywhere?"  With  a  sudden  gesture  she 
replied  in  a  shaking  voice,  "Here." 

Instantly  he  was  holding  the  paper  cone  with 
[81] 


LINDA   CONDON 

its  cold  air  against  her  scalp,  and  the  heat  was 
subdued.  He  glanced  nervously  at  his  watch, 
and  Mrs.  Condon  managed  to  ask,  "How  long?" 

"Twenty  minutes." 

Dangerous  as  the  whole  proceeding  seemed 
nothing  really  happened,  and  Linda's  fears  grad 
ually  faded  into  a  mere  curiosity  and  interest. 
A  curtain  hung  across  the  door  to  the  rest  of  the 
establishment,  but  it  had  been  brushed  partly 
aside;  and  she  could  see,  in  the  compartment  they 
had  vacated,  another  man  bending  with  waving 
irons  over  the  liberated  mass  of  a  woman's  hair. 
He  was  very  much  like  M.  Joseph,  but  he  was 
younger  and  had  only  a  dark  scrap  of  mustache. 
As  he  caught  up  the  hair  with  a  quick  double 
twist  he  leaned  very  close  to  the  woman's  face, 
whispering  with  an  expression  that  never 
changed,  an  expression  like  that  of  the  wax  heads 
in  the  show-case.  He  bent  so  low  that  Linda  was 
certain  their  cheeks  had  touched.  She  pondered 
at  length  over  this,  gazing  now  at  the  man  beyond 
and  now  at  M.  Joseph  flitting  with  the  cold-air 
tube  about  her  mother;  wondering  if,  when  she 
grew  older,  she  would  like  a  hair-dresser's  cheek 
against  hers.  Linda  decided  not.  The  idea 
didn't  shock  her,  the  woman  in  the  other  space 

[82] 


LINDA    CONDON 

plainly  liked  it;  still  she  decided  she  wouldn't 
A  different  kind  of  man,  she  told  herself,  would 
be  nicer. 

Her  thoughts  were  interrupted  by  a  sharp,  un 
pleasant  odor — the  odor  of  scorched  hair ;  and  she 
was  absolutely  rigid  with  horror  at  an  agonized 
cry  from  her  mother. 

"It's  burning  me  terribly,"  the  latter  cried. 
"Oh,  I  can't  stand  it.  Stop!  Stop!" 

M.  Joseph,  as  white  as  plaster,  rushed  to  the 
wall  and  reversed  the  handle,  and  Mrs.  Condon 
started  from  the  chair,  her  face  now  streaming 
with  actual  tears ;  but  before  she  could  escape  the 
man  threw  himself  on  her  shoulders. 

"You  mustn't  move,"  he  whispered  desperately, 
"you'll  tear  your  hair  out.  I  tell  you  no  harm's 
been  done.  Everything  is  all  right.  Please 
please  don't  cry  like  that.  It  will  ruin  my  busi 
ness.  There  are  others  in  the  establishment. 
Stop!"  he  shook  her  viciously. 

Linda  had  risen,  terrorized;  and  Mrs.  Condon, 
with  waving  plucking  hands,  was  sobbing  an  ap 
peal  to  be  released.  "My  head,  my  head,"  she 
repeated.  "I  assure  you" — the  man  motioned  to 
a  pallid  girl  to  hold  her  in  the  chair.  With  a 
towel  to  protect  his  hand  he  undid  a  screw,  lifted 

[83] 


LINDA    CONDON 

off  the  cap  and  untwisted  the  cotton  from  a  bound 
lock  of  hair;  releasing  it,  in  turn,  from  the  spindle 
it  fell  forward  in  a  complete  corkscrew  over  Mrs. 
Condon's  face. 

"Do  you  see!"  he  demanded.  "Perfect.  I 
give  you  my  word  they'll  all  be  like  that.  The 
cursed  heat  ran  up  on  me,"  he  added  in  a  swift 
aside  to  his  assistant.  "Has  Mrs.  Bellows  gone? 
Who's  still  in  the  place?  Here,  loose  that  bind 
ing  .  .  .  thank  God,  that  one  is  all  right,  too." 

Together  they  unfastened  most  of  the  connec 
tions,  and  a  growing  fringe  of  long  remarkable 
curls  marked  Mrs.  Condon's  pain-drawn  and 
dabbled  face.  Linda  sobbed  uncontrollably;  but 
perhaps,  after  all,  nothing  frightful  had  hap 
pened.  Her  poor  mother!  Then  fear  again 
tightened  about  her  heart  at  the  perturbed  ex 
pression  that  overtook  the  hair-dresser.  He  was 
trying  in  vain  to  remove  one  of  the  caps.  She 
caught  enigmatic  words — "the  borax,  crystallized 
.  .  .  solid.  It  would  take  a  plumber  .  .  .  have 
to  go." 

The  connection  was  immovable.  Even  in  her 
suffering  Mrs.  Condon  implored  M.  Joseph  to 
save  her  hair.  Nothing,  however,  could  be  done; 
he  admitted  it  with  pale  lips.  The  thing  might 

[84] 


LINDA   CONDON 

be  chiseled  off;  in  the  end  he  tried  to  force  a  re 
lease  and  the  strand,  with  a  renewal  of  Mrs.  Con 
don's  agony — now,  in  the  interest  of  her  appear 
ance,  heroically  withstood — snapped  short  in  the 
container. 

Rapidly  recovering  her  vigor,  she  launched  on 
a  tirade  against  M.  Joseph  and  his  permanent 
waving  establishment — Linda  had  never  before 
heard  her  mother  talk  in  such  a  loud  brutal  man 
ner,  nor  use  such  heated  unpleasant  words,  and 
the  girl  was  flooded  with  a  wretched  shame. 
Still  another  lock,  it  was  revealed,  had  been 
ruined,  and  crumbled  to  mere  dust  in  its  owner's 
fingers. 

"The  law  will  provide  for  you,"  she  promised. 

"Your  hair  was  dyed,"  the  proprietor  returned 
vindictively.  "The  girl  who  washed  it  will 
testify.  Every  one  is  warned  against  the  perma 
nent  if  their  hair  has  been  colored.  So  it  was  at 
your  own  risk." 

"My  head's  never  been  touched  with  dye,"  Mrs. 
Condon  shrilly  answered.  "You  lying  little  ape. 
And  well  does  that  young  woman  know  it.  She 
complimented  me  herself  on  a  true  blonde."  The 
girl  had,  too,  right  before  Linda. 

"You  ought  to  be  thrashed  out  of  the  city." 
[85] 


LINDA   CONDON 

"Your  money  will  be  given  back  to  you,"  M. 
Joseph  told  her. 

Outside  they  found  a  taxi,  and  sped  back  to 
their  hotel.  Above,  Mrs.  Condon  removed  her 
hat;  and,  before  the  uncompromising  mirror, 
studied  her  wrecked  hair — a  frizzled  vacancy  was 
directly  over  her  left  brow — and  haggard  face. 
When  she  finally  turned  to  Linda,  her  manner, 
her  words,  were  solemn. 

"I'm  middle-aged,"  she  said. 

A  dreary  silence  enveloped  them  sitting  in  the 
dark  reception-room  while  Mrs.  Condon  rest 
lessly  shredded  unlighted  cigarettes  on  the  floor. 
She  had  made  no  effort  to  repair  the  damages  to 
her  appearance,  and  when  the  telephone  bell 
sharply  sounded,  she  reached  out  in  a  slovenly 
negligence  of  manner.  Linda  could  hear  a 
blurred  articulation  and  her  mother  answering 
listlessly.  The  latter  at  last  said:  "Very  well,  at 
seven  then;  you'll  stop  for  us."  She  hung  up  the 
receiver,  stared  blankly  at  Linda,  and  then  went 
off  into  a  harsh  mirth.  "Oh,  my  God!"  she 
cried;  "the  old  ladies'  home!" 


[86] 


XI 

WTH  her  mother  away  on  a  wedding- 
trip  with  Mr.  Moses  Feldt,  Linda 
was  suddenly  projected  into  the  com 
panionship  of  his  two  daughters.     One,  as  he 
had  said,  was  light,  but  a  different  fairness  from 
Mrs.  Condon's — richly  thick,  like  honey;  while 
Judith,  the  elder,  who  must  have  been  twenty, 
was  dark  in  skin,  in  everything  but  her  eyes, 
which   were    a    contrasting    ashen-violet.     She 
spoke  at  once  of  Linda's  flawless  whiteness : 

"A  magnolia,"  she  said,  in  a  deliberate  dark 
voice;  "you  are  quite  a  gorgeous  child.  Do  you 
mind  my  saying  that  your  clothes  are  rather 
quaint?  They  aren't  inevitable,  and  yours  ought 
to  be  that." 

They  were  at  lunch  in  the  Feldt  dining-room, 
an  interior  of  heavy  ornately  carved  black  wood, 
panels  of  Chinese  embroidery  in  imperial  yellow, 
and  a  neutral  mauve  carpet.  The  effect,  with 
glittering  iridescent  pyramids  of  glass,  massive 
frosted  repousse  silver,  burnished  gold-plate  and 

[87] 


LINDA   CONDON 

a  wide  table  decoration  of  orchids  and  fern, 
was  tropical  and  intense.  It  was  evident  to 
Linda  that  the  Feldts  were  very  rich  indeed. 

The  entire  apartment  resembled  the  dining- 
room,  while  the  building  itself  filled  a  whole  city 
block,  with  a  garden  and  fountains  like  an  elabo 
rate  public  square.  Linda,  however,  wasn't  par 
ticularly  impressed  by  such  show;  she  saw  that 
Judith  and  Pansy  had  expected  that  of  her;  but 
she  was  determined  not  to  exhibit  a  surprise 
that  would  imply  any  changes  in  her  mother's 
and  her  condition.  In  addition,  Linda  calmly 
took  such  surroundings  for  granted.  Her  pri 
mary  conception  of  possible  existence  was  ele 
gance;  its  necessity  had  so  entered  into  her  being 
that  it  had  departed  from  her  consciousness. 

"I  must  take  you  to  Lorice,"  Judith  continued; 
"she  will  know  better  than  any  one  else  what  you 
ought  to  have.  You  seem  terribly  pure — at  first. 
But  you're  not  a  snowdrop;  oh,  no — something 
very  rare  in  a  conservatory.  Much  better  style 
than  your  mother." 

"I  hope  you  won't  mind  Judith,"  Pansy  put 
in;  "she's  always  like  that."  A  silence  followed 
in  which  they  industriously  dipped  the  leaves  of 
mammoth  artichokes  into  a  buttery  sauce. 

[88] 


LINDA   CONDON 

Linda,  as  customary,  said  very  little,  she  listened 
with  patient  care  to  the  others  and  endeavored  to 
arrive  at  conclusions.  She  liked  Pansy,  who  was 
as  warm  and  simple  as  her  father.  Judith  was 
harder  to  understand.  She  was  absorbed  in  color 
and  music,  and  declared  that  ugliness  gave  her  a 
headache  at  once.  Altogether,  Linda  decided,  she 
was  rather  silly,  especially  about  men;  and  at 
times  her  emotions  would  rise  beyond  control  until 
she  wept  in  a  thin  hysterical  gasping. 

The  room  where,  mostly,  they  sat  was  small, 
but  with  a  high  ceiling,  and  hung  in  black,  with 
pagoda-like  vermilion  chairs.  The  light,  in  the 
evening,  was  subdued;  and  Pansy  and  Judith,  in 
extremely  clinging  vivid  dresses,  the  former's  hair 
piled  high  in  an  amber  mass  and  Judith's  drawn 
severely  across  her  ears,  were  lovely.  Linda 
thought  of  the  tropical  butterflies  of  the  river 
Amazon,  of  orchids  like  those  always  on  the  din 
ing-room  table.  A  miniature  grand  piano  stood 
against  the  drapery,  and  Judith  often  played. 
Linda  learned  to  recognize  some  of  the  composers. 
Pansy  liked  best  the  modern  waltzes;  Judith  in 
sisted  that  Richard  Strauss  was  incomparable ;  but 
Linda  developed  an  overwhelming  preference  for 
Gluck.  The  older  girl  insisted  that  this  was  an 

[89] 


LINDA   CONDON 

affectation;  for  a  while  she  tried  to  confuse 
Linda's  knowledge;  but  finally,  playing  the  airs 
of  "Orpheus  and  Eurydice,"  she  admitted  that  the 
latter  was  sincere. 

"They  sound  so  cool,"  Linda  said  in  a  clear 
and  decided  manner. 

There  was  a  man  with  them,  and  he  shook  his 
head  in  a  mock  sadness.  "So  young  and  yet  so 
formal.  If,  with  the  rest,  you  had  Judith's  tem 
perament,  you  would  be  the  most  irresistible  crea 
ture  alive.  For  see,  my  dear  child,  as  it  is  you 
stir  neither  tenderness  nor  desire;  you  are  remote 
and  perfect,  and  faintly  wistful.  I  can't  imagine 
being  human  or  even  comfortable  with  you  about. 
Then,  too,  you  have  too  much  wisdom." 

"She  is  frightful,"  Pansy  agreed;  "she's  never 
upset  nor  her  hair  a  sight;  and,  above  all  else, 
Linda  won't  tell  you  a  thing." 

"Some  day,"  Judith  informed  them  from  the 
rippling  whisper  of  the  piano,  "she  will  be  mag 
nificently  loved." 

"Certainly,"  the  man  continued;  "but  what 
will  Linda,  Linda  Condon,  give  in  return?" 

^It's  a  mistake  to  give  much,"  Linda  said 
evenly. 

[90] 


LINDA    CONDON 

"No,  no,  no!"  Judith  cried.  "Give  every 
thing;  spend  every  feeling,  every  nerve." 

"You  are  remarkable,  of  course;  almost  no 
women  have  the  courage  of  their  emotions."  His 
name  was  Reynold  Chase,  a  long  thin  grave 
young  man  in  a  dinner  coat,  who  wrote  brilliant 
and  successful  comedies.  "Yet  Linda  isn't  par 
simonious."  He  turned  to  her.  "Just  what  are 
you?  What  do  you  think  of  love?" 

"I  haven't  thought  about  it  much,"  she  replied 
slowly.  "I'm  not  sure  that  I  know  what  it 
means.  At  least  it  hasn't  anything  to  do  with 
marriage — " 

"Ah!"  he  interrupted  her. 

Her  usually  orderly  mind  grew  confused;  it 
eddied  as  though  with  the  sound  of  the  piano. 
"It  is  not  marriage,"  she  vaguely  repeated  her 
mother's  instruction.  Reynold  Chase  supported 
her. 

"That  destroys  it,"  he  asserted.  "This  love 
is  as  different  as  possible  from  the  ignominious 
impulse  eternally  tying  the  young  into  knots. 
It's  anti-social." 

"How  stupid  you  are,  Reynold,"  Pansy  pro 
tested.  "If  you  want  to  use  those  complicated 

[91] 


LINDA   CONDON 

words  take  Judith  into  the  drawing-room.  I'm 
sure  Linda  is  dizzy,  too." 

The  latter's  mental  confusion  lingered ;  she  had 
a  strong  sense  of  having  heard  Reynold  Chase 
say  these  strange  things  long  before.  Judith  left 
the  piano,  sat  beside  him,  and  he  lightly  kissed 
her.  A  new  dislike  of  Judith  Feldt  deepened  in 
Linda's  being.  She  had  no  reason  for  it,  but 
suddenly  she  felt  absolutely  opposed  to  her.  The 
manner  in  which  Judith  rested  against  the  man 
by  her  was  very  distasteful.  It  offended  Linda 
inexplicably;  she  wanted  to  draw  into  an  infinity 
of  distance  from  all  contact  with  men  and  life. 

She  didn't  even  want  to  make  one  of  those  mar 
riages  that  had  nothing  to  do  with  love,  but  was 
only  a  sensible  arrangement  for  the  securing  of 
gowns  and  velvet  hangings  and  the  luxury  of  en 
closed  automobiles.  Suddenly  she  felt  lonely, 
and  hoped  that  her  mother  would  come  back 
soon. 


[92] 


XII 

BUT  when  her  mother,  now  Mrs.  Moses 
Feldt,  did  return,  Linda  was  conscious  of 
a  keen  disappointment.  Somehow  she 
never  actually  came  back.  It  wasn't  only  that, 
after  so  many  years  together,  she  occupied  a  room 
with  another  than  Linda,  but  her  manner  was 
changed;  it  had  lost  all  freedom  of  heart  and 
speech.  The  new  Mrs.  Feldt  was  heavily  polite 
to  her  husband's  daughters;  Linda  saw  that  she 
liked  Pansy,  but  Judith  made  her  uncomfortable. 
She  expressed  this  in  an  isolated  return  of  the 
old  confidences: 

"That  girl,"  she  said  sharply,  "likes  petting. 
She  can  talk  all  night  about  her  soul  and  beauty, 
and  play  the  piano  till  her  fingers  drop  off,  but  I 
— I — know.  You  can't  fool  me  where  they  are 
concerned.  I  can  recognize  an  unhealthy  sign. 
I  never  believed  in  going  to  all  those  concerts 
and  kidding  yourself  into  a  fever.  I  may  have 
shown  myself  a  time,  but  you  mark  my  word — I 
was  honest  compared  to  Judith  Feldt.  Don't  you 

[93] 


LINDA    CONDON 

be  impressed  with  all  her  art  talk  and  the  books 
she  reads.  I  was  looking  into  one  yesterday,  and 
it  made  me  blush;  you  can  believe  it  or  not,  it 
takes  some  book  for  that! " 

At  the  same  time  she  treated  Judith  with  a 
studious  sweetness.  Mr.  Moses  Feldt — Linda 
always  thought  of  him  as  that — was  a  miracle  of 
kindly  cheerfulness.  He  made  his  wife  and  her 
daughter,  and  his  own  girls,  an  unbroken  succes 
sion  of  elaborate  and  costly  presents.  "What's 
it  for  if  not  to  spend  on  those  you  love?"  he  would 
remark,  bringing  a  small  jeweler's  box  wrapped 
in  creamy-pink  paper  from  his  pocket.  "You 
can't  take  it  with  you.  I  wasn't  born  with  it — 
mama  and  I  were  as  poor  as  any — you'll  forgive 
me,  Stella,  I  know,  for  speaking  of  her.  I  got 
enough  heart  to  love  you  both.  'Oh,  mama!'  I 
said,  and  she  dying,  'if  you  only  won't  go,  I'll 
give  you  gold  to  eat.' '" 

Curiously,  as  Linda  grew  older,  the  conscious 
ness  of  her  stepfather  as  an  absurd  fat  little  man 
dwindled ;  she  lost  all  sense  of  his  actual  person ; 
and,  as  the  influence  of  her  mother  slipped  from 
her  life,  the  mental  conception  of  Mr.  Moses  Feldt 
deepened.  She  thought  about  him  a  great  deal 
and  very  seriously;  the  things  he  said,  the  warm 

[94] 


LINDA   CONDON 

impact  of  his  being,  vibrated  in  her  memory. 
He  had  the  effect  on  her  of  the  music  of  Christo 
pher  Gluck — the  effect  of  a  pure  fine  chord. 

Pansy  she  now  thought  of  with  a  faint  con 
tempt  :  she  was  rapidly  growing  thick- waisted  and 
heavy,  and  she  was  engaged  to  a  dull  young  man 
not  rich  enough  to  be  interesting.  They  sat  about 
in  frank  embraces  and  indulged  in  a  sentimental 
speech  that  united  Judith  and  Linda  in  common 
oppression. 

There  were,  not  infrequently,  gatherings  of  the 
Feldts  at  dinner,  a  noisy  good-tempered  uproar  of 
a  great  many  voices  speaking  at  once;  extraordi 
nary  quantities  of  superlative  jewels  and  dresses 
of  superfine  textures;  but  the  latter,  Linda 
thought,  were  too  vivid  in  pattern  or  color  for  the 
short  full  maternal  figures  they  often  adorned. 
But  no  one,  it  seemed,  considered  himself  ageing 
or  even,  in  spite  of  the  most  positive  indications, 
aged.  The  wives  with  faded  but  fashionable 
hair  and  animated  eyes  in  spent  faces  talked  with 
vigorous  raillery  about  the  "boys,"  who,  it  might 
have  happened,  had  gone  in  a  small  masculine 
company  to  a  fervid  musical  show  the  evening 
before.  While  they,  in  their  turn,  thick  like 
their  brother  or  cousin  Moses,  with  time-wasted 

[95] 


LINDA    CONDON 

hair  and  countenances  marked  with  the  shrewd 
ness  in  the  service  of  which  the  greater  part  of 
their  lives  had  vanished,  had  their  little  jokes 
about  the  "girls"  and  the  younger  and  handsomer 
beaux  who  threatened  their  happiness. 

At  times  the  topic  of  business  crept  into  the 
lighter  discussion,  and,  in  an  instant,  the  gaiety 
evaporated  and  left  expressionless  men  and  quick 
sharp  sentences  steely  with  decision,  or  indirect 
and  imperturbably  blank.  A  memorandum  book 
and  a  gold  pencil  would  appear  for  an  enigmatic 
note,  after  which  the  cheerfulness  slowly  revived. 

The  daughters  resembled  Judith  or  the  slower 
placidity  of  Pansy;  while  there  was  still  another 
sort,  more  vigorous  in  being,  who  consciously  dis 
cussed  riding  academies,  the  bridle-paths  of  Cen 
tral  Park,  and  the  international  tennis.  Their 
dress  held  a  greater  restraint  than  the  elders; 
though  Linda  recognized  that  it  was  no  less  lav 
ish;  and  their  feminine  trifles,  the  morocco 
beauty-cases  and  powder-boxes,  the  shoulder- 
pins,  their  slipper  and  garter  buckles  were  ex 
travagant  in  exquisite  metals  and  workings. 

They  arrived  in  limousines  with  dove-colored 
upholstery  and  crystal  vases  of  maidenhair  fern 
and  moss-roses;  and  often,  in  such  a  car,  Linda 

[96] 


LINDA    CONDON 

went  to  the  theatre  with  Judith  or  Pansy  and 
some  cousins.  Usually  it  was  a  matinee,  where 
their  seats  were  the  best  procurable,  directly  at 
the  stage;  and  they  sat  in  a  sleek  expensive  row 
eating  black  chocolates  from  painted  boxes 
ruffled  in  rose  silk.  The  audience,  composed 
mostly  of  their  own  world,  followed  the  exotic 
fortunes  of  the  plays  with  a  complete  discrimi 
nation  in  every  possible  emotional  display  and 
crisis. 

Lithe  actresses  in  a  revealing  severity  of  attire, 
like  spoiled  nuns  with  carmine  lips,  suffering  in 
ingenuous  problems  of  the  passions,  agonized  in 
shuddering  tones;  or  else  they  went  to  concerts 
to  hear  young  violinists,  slender,  with  intense 
faces  and  dramatic  hair,  play  concertos  that  irri 
tated  Linda  with  little  shivers  of  delight. 

Sometimes  they  had  lunch  in  a  restaurant  of 
Circassian  walnut  and  velvet  carpets,  with  cock 
tails,  and  eggs  -elaborate  with  truffles  and  French 
pastry.  Then,  afterward,  they  would  stop  at  a 
confectioner's,  or  at  a  cafe  where  there  was  danc 
ing,  for  tea.  They  all  danced  in  a  perfection  of 
slow  graceful  abandon,  with  youths  who,  it 
seemed  to  Linda,  did  nothing  else. 

She  accepted  her  part  in  this  existence  as  in- 
[97] 


LINDA   CONDON 

evitable,  yet  she  was  persistently  aware  of  a  feel 
ing  of  strangeness,  of  essential  difference  from  it. 
She  was  unable  to  lose  a  sense  of  looking  on,  as 
if  morning,  noon  and  night  she  were  at  another 
long  play.  Linda  regarded  it — as  she  did  so 
much  else — with  neither  enthusiasm  nor  marked 
annoyance.  Probably  it  would  continue  without 
change  through  her  entire  life.  All  that  was 
necessary,  and  easily  obtained,  was  a  sufficient 
amount  of  money. 

Her  manner,  Pansy  specially  complained,  was 
not  intimate  and  inviting;  in  her  room  Linda 
usually  closed  the  door;  the  frank  community  of 
the  sisters  was  distasteful  to  her.  She  demanded 
an  extraordinary  amount  of  personal  privacy. 
Linda  never  consulted  Judith's  opinion  about  her 
clothes,  nor  exchanged  the  more  significant  as 
pects  of  feeling.  Alone  in  a  bed-chamber  fur 
nished  in  silvery  Hungarian  ash,  her  bed  a  pale 
quilted  luxury  with  Madeira  linen  crusted  in 
monograms,  without  head  or  foot  boards,  and  a 
dressing-table  noticeably  bare,  she  would  deliber 
ately  and  delicately  prepare  for  the  night. 

While  Judith's  morning  bath  steamed  with  the 
softness  and  odor  of  lavender  crystals,  Linda 

[98] 


LINDA   CONDON 

slipped  into  water  almost  cold.  This,  with  her 
clear  muslins  and  heavy  black  silk  stockings,  her 
narrow  unornamented  slippers,  represented  the 
perfection  of  niceness. 

There  were  others  than  Pansy,  however,  who 
commented  on  what  they  called  her  superiority — 
the  young  men  who  appeared  in  the  evening.  A 
number  of  them,  cousins  of  the  Feldt  dinner 
parties  or  more  casual,  tried  to  engage  her  sym 
pathies  in  their  persons  and  prospects.  It  was  a 
society  of  early  maturity.  But,  without  apparent 
effort,  she  discouraged  them,  principally  by  her 
serene  lack  of  interest.  It  was  a  fundamental 
part  of  her  understanding  of  things  that  younger 
men  were  unprofitable;  she  liked  far  better  the 
contemporaries  of  Moses  Feldt. 

Reynold  Chase  had  ceased  his  visits,  but  his 
place  had  been  taken  by  another  and  still  an 
other  emotionally  gifted  man.  The  present  one 
was  dark  and  imperturbable:  they  knew  little  of 
him  beyond  the  facts  that  he  had  been  a  long 
while  in  the  Orient,  that  his  manner  and  French 
were  unsurpassed,  and  that  practically  every  con 
siderable  creative  talent  in  New  York  was  en 
tertained  in  his  rooms. 

[99] 


LINDA   CONDON 

Judith  had  been  to  one  of  his  parties ;  and,  the 
following  morning  in  bed,  she  told  Pansy  and 
Linda  the  most  remarkable  things. 

"It  would  never  do  for  Pansy,"  she  concluded; 
"but  I  must  get  Markue  to  ask  you  sometime, 
Linda.  How  old  are  you  now?  Well,  that's 
practically  sixteen,  and  you  are  very  grown  up. 
You  would  be  quite  sensational,  in  one  of  your 
plain  white  frocks,  in  his  apartment.  You'd 
have  to  promise  not  to  tell  your  mother,  though. 
She  thinks  I'm  leading  you  astray  now — the  old 
dear.  Does  she  think  I  am  blind.  I  met  a  man 
last  week,  a  friend  of  father's,  who  used  to  know 
her.  Of  course  he  wouldn't  say  anything,  men 
are  such  idiots  about  that — like  ostriches  with 
their  pasts  buried  and  all  the  feathers  sticking 
out — but  there  was  a  champagne  expression  in 
his  smile." 

Linda  wondered,  later,  if  she'd  care  to  go  to  a 
party  of  Markue's.  There  was  a  great  deal  of 
drinking  at  such  affairs;  and  though  she  rather 
liked  cordials,  creme  de  the  and  Grand  Marnier, 
even  stronger  things  flavored  with  limes  and  an 
occasional  frigid  cocktail,  she  disliked — from  a 
slight  experience — men  affected  by  drink. 
Judith  had  called  her  a  constitutional  prude; 
[100] 


LINDA    CONDON 

this,  she  understood,  was  a  term  of  reproach; 
and  she  wondered  if,  applied  to  her,  it  were  just. 

Usually  it  meant  a  religious  person  or  one 
fussy  about  the  edge  of  her  skirt;  neither  of 
which  she  ever  considered.  She  didn't  like  to 
sit  in  a  corner  and  be  hugged — even  that  she 
could  now  assert  with  a  degree  of  knowledge — 
but  it  wasn't  because  she  was  shocked.  Nothing, 
she  told  herself  gravely,  shocked  her;  only  cer 
tain  acts  and  moments  annoyed  her  excessively. 
It  was  as  if  her  mind  were  a  crisp  dress  with  rib 
bons  which  she  hated  to  have  mussed  or  disar 
ranged. 

Linda  didn't  take  the  trouble  to  explain  this. 
Now  that  her  mother  had  withdrawn  from  her 
into  a  perpetual  and  uncomfortable  politeness 
she  confided  in  no  one.  She  would  have  been  at 
a  loss  to  put  her  complicated  sensations  and 
thoughts  into  words.  Mr.  Moses  Feldt,  the  only 
one  to  whom  she  could  possibly  talk  intimately, 
would  be  upset  by  her  feelings.  He  would  give 
her  a  hug  and  the  next  day  bring  up  a  new  pres 
ent  from  his  pocket. 

Her  clothes,  with  the  entire  support  of  Lorice, 
were  all  delicate  in  fabric,  mostly  white  with 
black  sashes,  and  plainly  ruffled.  She  detested 
[101] 


LINDA   CONDON 

the  gray  crepe  de  Chine  from  which  Judith's  un 
dergarments  were  made  and  the  colored  embroid 
ery  of  Pansy's;  while  she  ignored  scented  toilet- 
waters  and  extracts.  Markue,  in  finally  asking 
her  to  a  party  at  his  rooms,  said  that  there  she 
would  resemble  an  Athenian  marble,  of  the  un- 
painted  epoch,  in  the  ballet  of  Scheherazade. 


[102] 


XIII 

4  4FTT1  HERE'S  nothing  special  to  say  about 
I  Markue's  parties,"  Judith,  dressing, 
JL  told  Linda.  "You  will  simply  have  to 
take  what  comes  your  way.  There  is  always 
some  one  serious  at  them,  if  you  insist,  as  usual, 
on  dignity."  She  stood  slim  and  seductive,  like 
a  perverse  pierrot,  before  the  oppressive  depths  of 
a  black  mirror.  Linda  had  finished  her  prepa 
rations  for  the  evening.  There  was  no  departure 
from  her  customary  blanched  exactness.  She 
studied  her  reflection  across  Judith's  shoulder; 
her  intense  blue  eyes,  under  the  level  blot  of 
her  bang,  were  grave  on  the  delicate  pallor  of 
her  face. 

In  the  taxi,  slipping  rapidly  down-town,  Linda 
was  conscious  of  a  slight  unusual  disturbance  of 
her  indifference.  This  had  nothing  to  do  with 
whether  or  not  she'd  be  a  success ;  her  own  social 
demands  were  so  small  that  any  considerable 
recognition  of  her  was  unimportant.  Her  pres 
ent  feeling  came  from  the  fact  that  to-night,  prac- 
[103] 


LINDA    CONDON 

tically,  she  was  making  her  first  grown-up  ap 
pearance  in  the  world,  the  world  from  which  she 
must  select  the  materials  of  her  happiness  and 
success.  To-night  she  would  have  an  opportu 
nity  to  put  into  being  all  that — no  matter  how 
firmly  held — until  now  had  been  but  convictions. 

Her  interest  was  not  in  whom  or  what  she  might 
meet,  but  in  herself.  Judith,  smoking  a  cig 
arette  in  a  mist  of  silver  fox,  was  plainly  excited. 
"I  like  Markue  awfully,"  she  admitted. 

"Does  he  care  for  you?"  Linda  asked. 

"That,"  said  Judith,  "I  can't  make  out— if  he 
likes  me  or  if  it's  just  anonymous  woman.  I 
wish  it  were  the  first,  Linda."  Her  voice  was 
shadowed;  suddenly,  in  spite  of  her  youth  and 
exhilaration,  she  seemed  haggard  and  spent. 
Linda  recognized  this  in  a  cold  scrutiny.  Pri 
vately  she  decided  that  the  other  was  a  fool — she 
didn't  watch  her  complexion  at  all. 

The  motor  turned  west  in  the  low  Forties  and 
stopped  before  a  high  narrow  stone  facade  with 
a  massive  griffon-guarded  door.  Judith  led  the 
way  directly  into  the  elevator  and  designated 
Markue's  floor.  It  was  at  the  top  of  the  build 
ing,  where  he  met  them  with  his  impenetrable  cour 
tesy  and  took  them  into  a  bare  room  evidently 
[104] 


LINDA   CONDON 

planned  for  a  studio.  There  were  an  empty  easel, 
the  high  blank  dusty  expanse  of  the  skylight,  and 
chairs  with  the  somber  hats  and  coats  of  men  and 
women's  wraps  like  the  glistening  shed  skins  of 
brilliant  snakes. 

They  turned  through  the  hall  to  an  interior 
more  remarkable  than  anything  Linda  could  have 
imagined;  it  seemed  to  her  very  high,  without 
windows  and  peaked  like  a  tent.  Draperies  of 
intricate  Eastern  color  hung  in  long  folds. 
There  were  no  chairs,  but  low  broad  divans 
about  the  walls,  a  thick  carpet  with  inlaid  stands 
in  the  center  laden  with  boxes  of  cigarettes, 
sugared  exotic  sweets  and  smoking  incense.  It 
was  so  dim  and  full  of  thick  scent,  the  shut  effect 
was  so  complete,  that  for  a  moment  Linda  felt 
painfully  oppressed ;  it  seemed  impossible  to 
breathe  in  the  wavering  bluish  atmosphere. 

Markue,  who  had  appeared  sufficiently  familiar 
outside,  now  had  a  strange  portentous  air;  the 
gleams  of  his  quick  black  eyes,  the  dusky  tone 
of  his  cheeks,  his  impassive  grace,  startled  her. 
New  York  was  utterly  removed :  the  taxi  that  had 
brought  Judith  and  her,  the  swirling  traffic  of 
Columbus  Circle  and  smooth  undulations  of 
Fifth  Avenue,  were  lost  with  a  different  life.  She 
[105] 


LINDA    CONDON 

saw,  however,  the  open  door  to  another  room  full 
of  clear  light,  and  her  self-possession  rapidly  re 
turned.  Judith — as  she  had  threatened — at  once 
deserted  her;  and  Linda  found  an  inconspicuous 
corner  of  a  divan. 

There  were,  perhaps,  twenty  people  in  the  two 
rooms,  and  each  one  engaged  her  attention.  A 
coffee-colored  woman  was  sitting  beyond  her, 
clad  in  loose  red  draperies  to  which  were  sewed 
shining  patterns  of  what  she  thought  was  gold. 
Markue  was  introducing  Judith,  and  the  seated 
figure  smiled  pleasantly  with  a  flash  of  beautiful 
teeth  and  the  supple  gesture  of  a  raised  brown 
palm.  That,  Linda  decided,  was  the  way  she 
shook  hands.  Two  dark-skinned  men,  one  in 
conventional  evening  dress,  were  with  her;  they 
had  small  fine  features  and  hair  like  carved  ebony. 

Linda  had  never  before  been  at  an  affair  with 
what  she  was  forced  to  call  colored  people;  in 
stinctively  she  was  antagonistic  and  superior. 
She  turned  to  a  solemn  masculine  presence  with 
a  ruffled  shirt  and  high  black  stock;  he  was  talk 
ing  in  a  resonant  voice  and  with  dramatic  ges 
tures  to  a  woman  with  a  white  face  and  low- 
drawn  hair.  Linda  was  fascinated  by  the  lat 
ter,  dressed  in  a  soft  clinging  dull  garnet.  It 
[106] 


LINDA   CONDON 

wasn't  her  clothes,  although  they  were  remark 
able,  that  held  her  attention,  but  the  woman's 
mouth.  Apparently,  it  had  no  corners.  Like  a 
little  band  of  crimson  rubber,  or  a  ring  of  vivid 
flame,  it  shifted  and  changed  in  the  oddest 
shapes.  It  was  an  unhappy  mouth,  and  made 
her  think  of  pain;  but  perhaps  not  so  much  that 
as  hunger  .  .  .  not  for  food,  Linda  was  certain. 
What  did  she  want  ? 

There  was  a  light  appealing  laugh  from  an 
other  seated  on  the  floor  in  a  floating  black 
dinner  dress  with  lovely  ankles  in  delicate  Span 
ish  lace  stockings;  her  head  was  thrown  back 
for  the  whisper  of  a  heavy  man  with  ashen  hair, 
a  heavenly  scarf  and  half-emptied  glass. 

Her  bare  shoulders,  Linda  saw,  were  as 
white  as  her  own,  as  white  but  more  sloping. 
The  other's  hair,  though,  was  the  loveliest  red 
possible.  The  entire  woman,  relaxed  and 
laughing  in  the  perfumery  and  swimming 
shadows,  was  irresistible.  A  man  with  a  huge 
nose  and  blank  eyes,  his  hands  disfigured  with 
extraordinary  rings,  momentarily  engaged  her. 
Then,  at  the  moment  when  she  saw  an  inviting 
and  correctly  conventional  youth,  he  crossed  and 
sat  at  her  side. 

[107] 


LINDA   CONDON 

"Quite  a  show,"  he  said  in  the  manner  she  had 
expected  and  approved.  The  glow  of  his  cig 
arette  wavered  over  firmly  cut  lips.  "We've  just 
come  to  New  York,"  he  continued.  "I  don't 
know  any  one  here  but  Markue,  do  you?"  Linda 
explained  her  own  limitations.  "The  Victory's 
fine  and  familiar." 

She  followed  his  gaze  to  where  a  winged  statue 
with  flying  drapery  was  set  on  a  stand.  She  had 
seen  it  before,  but  without  interest.  Now  it  held 
her  attention.  It  wasn't  a  large  cast,  not  over 
three  feet  high,  but  suddenly  Linda  thought  that 
it  was  the  biggest  thing  in  the  room;  it  seemed  to 
expand  as  she  watched  it. 

Beside  the  Victory,  in  a  glass  case  with  an  en 
closed  concealed  light,  was  a  statue,  greenish  gray, 
a  few  inches  tall,  with  a  sneering  placidity  of  ex 
pression  as  notable  as  the  sweep  of  the  other 
white  fragment.  "That's  Chinese,"  her  com 
panion  decided;  "it  looks  as  old  as  lust."  There 
was  the  stir  of  new  arrivals — a  towering  heavy 
man  with  a  slight  woman  in  emerald  satin. 
"There's  Pleydon,  the  sculptor,"  the  youth  told 
her  animatedly.  "I've  seen  him  at  the  exhi 
bitions.  It  must  be  Susanna  Noda,  the  Russian 
singer,  with  him.  He's  a  tremendous  swell." 
[108] 


XIV 

LINDA  watched  Pleydon  as  he  met 
Markue  in  the  middle  of  the  room.  He 
was  dressed  carelessly,  improperly  for 
the  evening;  but  she  forgave  that  as  the  result  of 
indifference.  The  informal  flannels  and  soft 
collar,  too,  suited  the  largeness  of  his  being  and 
gestures.  There  was  a  murmur  of  meeting, 
Susanna  Noda  smiled  appealingly;  and  then,  as 
Pleydon  found  a  place  on  a  divan,  she  at  once 
contentedly  sat  on  his  lap.  Watching  her,  Linda 
thought  of  a  brilliant  parrot;  but  that  was  only 
the  effect  of  her  color;  for  her  face,  with  a  tilted 
nose  and  wide  golden  eyes,  generous  warm  lips, 
was  charming.  She  lighted  a  cigarette,  turned 
her  graceful  back  on  the  room  and  company,  and 
chatted  in  French  to  the  composed  sculptor. 

Linda  divined  that  he  was  the  most  impressive 
figure  she  had  encountered;  the  quality  of  his  in 
difference  was  beautiful  and  could  only  have 
come  in  the  security  of  being  a  "tremendous 
swell."  That  phrase  described  all  for  which  she 
[109] 


LINDA    CONDON 

had  cared  most.  It  included  everything  that  her 
mother  had  indicated  as  desirable  and  a  lot  that 
she,  Linda,  had  added.  Money,  certainly,  was 
an  absolute  necessity;  but  there  were  other  things 
now  that  vaguely  she  desired.  She  tried  to  de 
cide  what  they  were. 

Only  the  old  inner  confusion  resulted,  the 
emotion  that  might  have  been  born  in  music; 
however,  it  was  sharper  than  usual,  and  bred  a 
new  dissatisfaction  with  the  easier  accomplish 
ments.  Really  it  was  very  disturbing,  for  the 
pressure  of  her  entire  experience,  all  she  had  been 
told,  could  be  exactly  weighed  and  held.  The 
term  luxury,  too,  was  revealing;  it  covered  every 
thing — except  her  present  unformed  longing. 

There  were  still  newcomers,  and  Linda  was 
aware  of  a  sudden  constraint.  A  woman  volubly 
French  had  appeared  with  a  long  pinkish-white 
dog  in  a  blanket,  and  the  three  Arabians — 
she  had  learned  that  much — had  risen  with  a  con 
certed  expression  of  surprise  and  displeasure. 
Their  anxiety,  though,  was  no  more  dramatic  than 
that  of  the  dog's  proprietor.  The  gesture  of  her 
hands  and  lifted  eyebrows  were  keenly  expressive 
of  her  impatience  with  any  one  who  couldn't  ac 
cept,  with  her,  her  dog. 

[110] 


LINDA    CONDON 

"Markue  ought  to  have  it  out,"  some  one  mur 
mured.  "Dogs,  to  high  caste  Mohammedans,  are 
unclean  animals."  Another  added,  "Worse  than 
that,  if  it  should  touch  them,  they  would  have  to 
make  the  pilgrimage  to  Mecca." 

Without  any  knowledge  of  the  situation  of 
Mecca,  Linda  yet  realized  that  it  must  be  a  very 
long  journey  to  result  from  the  mere  touch  of  a 
dog.  She  didn't  wonder  at  the  restrained  ex 
citement  of  the  "colored"  people.  The  situation 
was  reduced  to  a  sub-acid  argument  between  the 
Frenchwoman  and  the  Begum;  Madame  couldn't 
exist  without  her  "p'tit."  The  Oriental  lady 
could  not  breathe  a  common  air  with  the  beast. 
The  former  managed  a  qualified  triumph — the 
"p'tit"  was  caged  with  a  chair  in  a  corner,  and  the 
episode,  for  the  moment,  dropped. 

Soon,  however,  Linda  saw  that  the  dog  had 
wriggled  out  of  captivity.  It  made  a  cautious 
progress  to  where  the  candy  stood  on  a  low  stand 
and  ran  an  appreciative  tongue  over  the  exposed 
sweet  surfaces.  Rapidly  a  sugared  fig  was 
snapped  up.  Linda  held  her  breath;  no  one  had 
noticed  the  animal  yet — perhaps  it  would  reach 
one  of  the  objectors  and  she  would  have  the  thrill 
of  witnessing  the  departure  for  Mecca. 

[mi 


LINDA   CONDON 

But,  as  always,  nothing  so  romantic  occurred; 
the  dog  was  discovered,  and  the  Mohammedans, 
with  a  hurried  politeness,  made  their  salaams. 
Instead,  a  man  with  a  quizzical  scrutiny  through 
glasses  that  made  him  resemble  an  owl,  stopped 
before  her. 

"  'Here  we  go  'round  the  mulberry-bush/  "  he 
chanted.  "Hello,  Kate  Greenaway.  Have  you 
had  a  drink?" 

"Yes,  thank  you,"  she  replied  sedately. 

"Certified  milk?" 

"It  was  something  with  gin,"  she  particular 
ized,  "and  too  sweet."  He  took  the  place  beside 
her  and  solemnly  recited  a  great  many  nursery 
rhymes.  On  the  whole  she  liked  him,  deciding 
that  he  was  very  wicked.  Soon  he  was  holding 
her  hand  in  both  of  his.  "I  know  you're  not 
real,"  he  proceeded.  "Verlaine  wrote  you — 
'Les  I n genus' : 

"  'From  which  the  sudden  gleam  of  whiteness  shed 
Met  in  our  eyes  a  frolic  welcoming.' 

"What  if  I'd  kiss  you?" 
"Nothing,"  she  returned  coldly. 
"You're  remarkable!"  he  exclaimed  with  en 
thusiasm.     "If  you  are  not  already  one  of  the 
[112] 


LINDA    CONDON 

celebrated  beauties  you're  about  to  be.  As  cool 
as  a  fish!  Look — Pleydon  is  going  to  rise  and 
spill  little  Russia.  Have  you  heard  her  sing 
Scriabine?"  Linda  ignored  him  in  a  sharp  re 
turn  of  her  interest  in  the  big  carelessly-dressed 
man.  He  put  Susanna  Noda  aside  and  moved 
to  the  dim  middle  of  the  room.  His  features, 
Linda  saw,  were  rugged  and  pronounced;  he  was 
very  strong. 

For  a  moment  he  stood  gazing  at  the  Winged 
Victory,  his  brow  gathered  into  a  frown,  while  he 
made  a  caressing  gesture  with  his  whole  hand. 
Then  he  swung  about  and,  from  the  heavy 
shadows  of  his  face,  he  looked  down  at  her.  He 
was  still  for  a  disconcerting  length  of  time,  but 
through  which  Linda  steadily  met  his  interroga 
tion.  Then  he  bent  over  and  seriously  removed 
the  man  beside  her. 

"Adieu,  Louis,"  he  said. 

The  weight  of  Pleydon's  body  depressed  the 
entire  divan.  "An  ordinary  man,"  he  told  her, 
"would  ask  how  the  devil  you  got  here.  Then 
he  would  take  you  to  your  home  with  some  care 
fully  chosen  words  for  whatever  parents  you  had. 
But  I  can  see  that  all  this  is  needless.  You  are 
an  extremely  immaculate  person. 
[113] 


LINDA   CONDON 

"That  isn't  necessarily  admirable,"  he  added. 

"I  don't  believe  I  am  admirable  at  all,"  Linda 
replied. 

"How  old  are  you?"  he  demanded  abruptly. 

She  told  him. 

"Age  doesn't  exist  for  some  women,  they  are 
eternal,"  he  continued.  "You  see,  I  call  you  a 
woman,  but  you  are  not,  and  neither  are  you  a 
child.  You  are  Art — Art  the  deathless,"  his 
gaze  strayed  back  to  the  Victory. 

As  she,  too,  looked  at  it,  it  seemed  to  Linda 
that  the  cast  filled  all  the  room  with  a  swirl  of 
great  white  wings  and  heroic  robes.  In  an  in 
stant  the  incense  and  the  dark  colors,  the  un 
certain  pallid  faces  and  bare  shoulders,  were 
swept  away  into  a  space  through  which  she  was 
dizzily  borne.  The  illusion  was  so  overpowering 
that  involuntarily  she  caught  at  the  heavy  arm 
by  her. 


[114] 


XV 

"^  IT  THY  did  you  do  that?"  he  asked 
% /%/  quickly,  with  a  frowning  regard. 
V  V  Linda  replied  easily  and  directly. 
"It  seemed  as  if  it  were  carrying  me  with  it,"  she 
specified;  "on  and  on  and  on,  without  ever  stop 
ping.  I  felt  as  if  I  were  up  among  the  stars." 
She  paused,  leaning  forward,  and  gazed  at  the 
statue.  Even  now  she  was  certain  that  she  saw 
a  slight  flutter  of  its  draperies.  "It  is  beautiful, 
isn't  it?  I  think  it's  the  first  thing  I  ever  no 
ticed  like  that.  You  know  what  I  mean — the 
first  thing  that  hadn't  a  real  use." 

"But  it  has,"  he  returned.  "Do  you  think  it 
is  nothing  to  be  swept  into  heaven?  I  suppose 
by  'real'  you  mean  oatmeal  and  scented  soap. 
Women  usually  do.  But  no  one,  it  appears,  has 
any  conception  of  the  practical  side  of  great  art. 
You  might  try  to  remember  that  it  is  simply  per 
manence  given  to  beauty.  It's  like  an  amber  in 
which  beautiful  and  fragile  things  are  kept  for- 
[115] 


LINDA   CONDON 

ever  in  a  lovely  glow.  That  is  all,  and  it  is 
enough. 

"When  I  said  that  you  were  Art  I  didn't  mean 
that  you  were  skilfully  painted  and  dressed,  but 
that  there  was  a  quality  in  you  which  recalled  all 
the  charming  women  who  had  ever  lived  to  draw 
men  out  of  the  mud — something,  probably,  of 
which  you  are  entirely  unconscious,  and  certainly 
beyond  your  control.  You  have  it  in  a  remark 
able  degree.  It  doesn't  belong  to  husbands  but 
to  those  who  create  'Homer's  children.' 

"That's  a  dark  saying  of  Plato's,  and  it  means 
that  the  Alcestis  is  greater  than  any  momentary 
offspring  of  the  flesh." 

Linda  admitted  seriously,  "Of  course,  I  don't 
understand,  yet  it  seems  quite  familiar — " 

"Don't,  for  Heaven's  sake,  repeat  the  old  cant 
about  reincarnation;"  he  interrupted,  "and  sitting 
together,  smeared  with  antimony,  on  a  roof  of 
Babylon." 

She  hadn't  intended  to,  she  assured  him. 
"Tell  me  about  yourself,"  he  directed.  It  was  as 
natural  to  talk  with  him  as  it  was,  with  others,  to 
keep  still.  Her  frank  speech  flowed  on  and  on, 
supported  by  the  realization  of  his  attention. 

"There  really  isn't  much,  besides  hotels,  all 
[116] 


LINDA   CONDON 

different;  but  you'd  be  surprised  how  alike  they 
were,  too.  I  mean  the  things  to  eat,  and  the 
people.  I  never  realized  how  tired  I  was  of  them 
until  mother  married  Mr.  Moses  Feldt.  The 
children  were  simply  dreadful,  the  children  and 
the  women;  the  men  weren't  much  better."  She 
said  this  in  a  tone  of  surprise,  and  he  nodded. 
"I  can  see  now — I  am  supposed  to  be  too  old  for 
my  age,  and  it  was  the  hotels.  You  learn  a  great 
deal." 

"Do  you  like  Mr.  Moses  Feldt?" 

"Enormously;  he  is  terribly  sweet.  I  intend 
to  marry  a  man  just  like  him.  Or,  at  least,  he 
was  the  second  kind  I  decided  on:  the  first  only 
had  money,  then  I  chose  one  with  money  who 
was  kind,  but  now  I  don't  know.  It's  very 
funny:  kindness  makes  me  impatient.  I'm  per 
fectly  sure  I'll  never  care  for  babies,  they  are  so 
mussy.  I  don't  read,  and  I  can't  stand  being — 
well,  loved. 

"Mother  went  to  a  great  many  parties;  every 
one  liked  her  and  she  liked  every  one  back;  so  it 
was  easy  for  her.  I  used  to  long  for  the  time 
when  I'd  wear  a  lovely  cloak  and  go  out  in  a  little 
shut  motor  with  a  man  with  pearls;  but  now 
that's  gone.  They  want  to  kiss  you  so  much.  I 
[117] 


LINDA    CONDON 

wish  that  satisfied  me.  Why  doesn't  it?  Is 
there  anything  the  matter  with  me,  do  you  think? 
I've  been  told  that  I  haven't  any  heart." 

As  he  laughed  at  her  she  noticed  how  absurdly 
small  a  cigarette  seemed  in  his  broad  powerful 
hand.  "What  has  happened  to  you  is  this,"  he 
explained:  "a  combination  of  special  circum 
stances  has  helped  you  in  every  way  to  be  what, 
individually,  you  were.  As  a  rule,  children  are 
brought  up  in  a  house  of  lies,  like  taking  a  fine 
naked  body  and  binding  it  into  hideous  rigid 
clothes.  You  escaped  the  damnation  of  cheap 
ready-cut  morals  and  education.  Your  mother 
ought  to  have  a  superb  monument — the  perfect 
parent.  Of  course  you  haven't  a  'heart.'  From 
the  standpoint  of  nature  and  society  you're  as 
depraved  as  possible.  You  are  worse  than 
any  one  else  here — than  all  of  them  rolled 
together." 

Curiously,  she  thought,  this  didn't  disturb 
her,  which  proved  at  once  that  he  was  right. 
Linda  regarded  herself  with  interest  as  a  su 
premely  reprehensible  person,  perhaps  a  vampire. 
The  latter,  though,  was  a  rather  stout  woman  who, 
dressed  in  frightful  lingerie,  occupied  couches 
with  her  arms  caught  about  the  neck  of  a  man 
[118] 


LINDA   CONDON 

bending  over  her.  Every  detail  of  this  was  dis 
tasteful. 

What  was  she? 

Her  attention  wandered  to  the  squat  Chinese 
god  in  the  glass  case.  It  was  clear  that  he  hadn't 
stirred  for  ages.  A  difficult  thought  partly 
formed  in  her  mind — the  Chinese  was  the  god  of 
this  room,  of  Markue's  party,  of  the  women 
seated  in  the  dim  light  on  the  floor  and  the  di 
vans  ;  the  low  gurgle  of  their  laughter,  the  dusky 
whiteness  of  their  shoulders  in  the  upcoiling  in 
cense,  the  smothered  gleams  of  their  hair,  with 
the  whispering  men,  were  the  world  of  the  gray 
ish-green  image. 

She  explained  this  haltingly  to  Pleydon,  who 
listened  with  a  flattering  interest.  "I  expect 
you're  laughing  at  me  inside,"  she  ended  im- 
potently.  "And  the  other,  the  Greek  Victory," 
he  added,  "is  the  goddess  of  the  other  world,  of 
the  spirit.  It's  quaint  a  heathen  woman  should 
be  that." 

Linda  discovered  that  she  liked  Pleydon  enor 
mously.  She  continued  daringly  that  he  might  be 
the  sort  of  man  she  wanted  to  marry.  But  he 
wouldn't  be  easy  to  manage;  probably  he  could 
not  be  managed  at  all.  Her  mother  had  always 
[119] 


LINDA   CONDON 

insisted  upon  the  presence  of  that  possibility  in 
any  candidate  for  matrimony.  And,  until  now, 
Linda's  philosophy  had  been  in  accord  with  her. 
But  suddenly  she  entertained  the  idea  of  losing 
herself  completely  in — in  love. 

A  struggle  was  set  up  within  her:  on  one  hand 
was  everything  that  she  had  been,  all  her  ex 
perience,  all  advice,  and  her  innate  detachment; 
on  the  other  an  obscure  delicious  thrill.  Per 
haps  this  was  what  she  now  wanted.  Linda 
wondered  if  she  could  try  it — just  a  little,  let  her 
self  go  experimentally.  She  glanced  swiftly  at 
Pleydon,  and  his  bulk,  his  heavy  features,  the 
sullen  mouth,  appalled  her. 

Men  usually  filled  her  with  an  unaccountable 
shrinking  into  her  remotest  self.  Pleydon  was 
different;  her  liking  for  him  had  destroyed  a 
large  part  of  her  reserve;  but  a  surety  of  instinct 
told  her  that  she  couldn't  experiment  there.  It 
was  characteristic  that  a  lesser  challenge  left  her 
cold.  She  had  better  marry  as  she  had  planned. 

Susanna  Noda  came  up  petulantly  and  sank  in 
a  brilliant  graceful  swirl  at  his  feet.  Her  golden 
eyes,  half  shut,  studied  Linda  intently. 

[120] 


XVI 

i4<TT  AM  fatigued,"  she  complained;  "you 
i  know  how  weary  I  get  when  you  ignore 

JL  me."  He  gazed  down  at  her  untouched. 
"I  have  left  Lao-tze  for  Greece,"  he  replied.  She 
found  this  stupid  and  said  so.  "Has  he  been  no 
more  amusing  than  this?"  she  asked  Linda. 
"But  then,  you  are  a  child,  it  all  intrigues  you. 
You  listen  with  the  flattery  of  your  blue  eyes  and 
mouth,  both  open." 

"Don't  be  rude,  Susanna,"  Pleydon  com 
manded.  "You  are  so  feminine  that  you  are 
foolish.  I'm  not  the  stupid  one — look  again  at 
our  'child.'  Tell  me  what  you  see." 

"I  see  Siberia,"  she  said  finally.  "I  see  the 
snow  that  seems  so  pure  while  it  is  as  blank  and 
cold  as  death.  You  are  right,  Dodge.  I  was  the 
dull  one.  This  girl  will  be  immensely  loved; 
perhaps  by  you.  A  calamity,  I  promise  you. 
Men  are  pigs,"  she  turned  again  to  Linda;  "no — 
imbeciles,  for  only  idiots  destroy  the  beauty  that 
is  given  to  them.  They  take  your  reputation 
[121] 


LINDA   CONDON 

with  a  smile,  they  take  your  heart  with  iron 
fingers;  your  beauty  they  waste  like  a  drunken 
Russian  with  gold." 

"Susanna,  like  all  spendthrifts,  is  amazed  by 
poverty." 

Even  in  the  gloom  Linda  could  see  the  pallor 
spreading  over  the  other's  face ;  she  was  glad  that 
Susanna  Noda  spoke  in  Russian.  However, 
with  a  violent  effort,  she  subdued  her  bitterness. 
"Go  into  your  Siberia!"  she  cried.  "I  always 
thought  you  were  capable  of  the  last  folly  of 
marriage.  If  you  do  it  will  spoil  everything. 
You  are  not  great,  you  know,  not  really  great, 
not  in  the  first  rank.  YouVe  only  the  slightest 
chance  of  that,  too  much  money.  You  were  never 
in  the  gutter  as  I  was — " 

"Chateaubriand,"  he  interrupted,  "Dante, 
Velasquez." 

"No,  not  spiritually!"  she  cried  again. 
"What  do  you  know  of  the  inferno!  Married, 
you  will  get  fat."  Pleydon  turned  lightly  to 
Linda: 

"As  a  supreme  favor  do  not,  when  I  ask  you, 
marry  me." 

This,  for  Linda,  was  horribly  embarrassing. 
However,  she  gravely  promised.  The  Russian 
[122] 


LINDA    CONDON 

lighted  a  cigarette;  almost  she  was  serene  again. 
Linda  said,  "Fatness  is  awful,  isn't  it?" 

Pleydon  replied,  "Death  should  be  the  penalty. 
If  women  aren't  lovely — "  he  waved  away  every 
other  consideration. 

"And  if  men  have  fingers  like  carrots — " 
Susanna  mimicked  him.  Judith,  flushed,  her 
hair  loosened,  approached.  "Linda,"  she  de 
manded,  "do  you  remember  when  we  ordered  the 
taxi?  Was  it  two  or  three?"  Markue,  at  her 
shoulder,  begged  her  not  to  consider  home. 

"I'm  going  almost  immediately,"  Pleydon 
said,  "and  taking  your  Linda."  His  height  and 
determined  manner  scattered  all  objections. 

Linda,  at  the  entrance  to  the  apartment,  found 
to  her  great  surprise — in  place  of  the  motor  she 
had  expected — a  small  graceful  single-horse  vic 
toria,  the  driver  buttoned  into  a  sealskin  rug. 
Deep  in  furs,  beside  Pleydon,  she  was  remarkably 
comfortable,  and  she  was  soothed  by  the  rhythmic 
beat  of  the  hoofs,  the  even  progress  through  the 
crystal  night  of  Fifth  Avenue. 

Her   companion  flooded   his   being   with   the 

frozen  air.     They  had,  it  seemed,  lost  all  desire 

to  talk.     The  memory  of  Markue's  party  lingered 

like  the  last  vanishing  odor  of  his  incense;  there 

[123] 


LINDA   CONDON 

was  a  confused  vision  of  the  murmurous  room 
against  the  lighted  exterior  where  the  drinks 
sparkled  on  a  table.  Linda  made  up  her  mind 
that  she  would  not  go  to  another.  Then  she 
wondered  if  she'd  see  Pleydon  again.  The  Rus 
sian  singer  had  been  too  silly  for  words. 

It  suddenly  occurred  to  her  that  the  man  now 
with  her  had  taken  Susanna  Noda,  and  that  he 
had  left  her  planted.  He  had  preferred  driving 
her,  Linda  Condon,  home.  He  wasn't  very  en 
thusiastic  about  it,  though;  his  face  was  gloomy. 

"The  truth  is,"  he  remarked  at  last,  "that 
Susanna  is  right — I  am  not  in  the  first  rank.  But 
that  was  all  nonsense  about  the  necessity  of  the 
gutter — sentimental  lies." 

Linda  was  not  interested  in  this,  but  it  left  her 
free  to  explore  her  own  emotions.  The  night  had 
been  eventful  because  it  had  shaken  all  the  foun 
dation  of  what  she  intended.  That  single  mo 
mentary  delicious  thrill  had  been  enough  to 
threaten  the  entire  rest.  At  the  same  time  her 
native  contempt  of  the  other  women,  of  Judith 
with  her  tumbled  hair,  persisted.  Was  there  no 
other  way  to  capture  such  happiness?  Was  it 
all  hopelessly  messy  with  drinks  and  unpleasant 
familiarity? 

[124] 


LINDA   CONDON 

What  did  Pleydon  mean  by  spirit?  Surely 
there  must  be  more  kinds  of  love  than  one — he 
had  intimated  that.  She  gathered  that  "Homer's 
children,"  those  airs  of  Gluck  that  she  liked  so 
well,  were  works  of  art,  sculpture,  such  as  he  did. 
Yet  she  had  never  thought  of  them  as  important, 
important  as  oatmeal  or  delicate  soap.  She  made 
up  her  mind  to  ask  him  about  it,  when  she  saw 
that  they  had  reached  the  Eighties;  she  was  al 
most  home. 

"I  am  going  away  to-morrow,"  he  told  her, 
"for  the  winter,  to  South  America.  When  I  come 
back  we'll  see  each  other.  If  you  should  change 
address  send  me  a  line  to  the  Harvard  Club." 
The  carriage  had  stopped  before  the  great  arched 
entrance  to  the  apartment-house,  towering  in  its 
entire  block.  He  got  out  and  lifted  her  to  the 
pavement  as  if  she  had  been  no  more  than  a  flower 
in  his  hands.  Then  he  walked  with  her  into  the 
darkness  of  the  garden. 

The  fountains  were  cased  in  boards ;  the  hedged 
borders,  the  bushes  and  grass,  were  dead.  High 
above  them  on  the  dark  wall  a  window  was 
bright.  Linda's  heart  began  to  pound  loudly, 
she  was  trembling  .  .  .  from  the  cold.  There 
was  a  faint  sound  in  the  air — the  elevated  trains, 
[125] 


LINDA   CONDON 

or  stirring  wings?  It  was  nothing,  then,  to  be 
lifted  into  heaven.  There  was  the  door  to  the 
hall  and  elevator.  She  turned,  to  thank  Dodge 
Pleydon  for  all  his  goodness  to  her,  when  he  lifted 
her — was  it  toward  heaven? — and  kissed  her 
mouth. 

She  was  still  in  his  arms,  with  her  eyes  closed. 
"Linda  Condon?"  he  said,  in  a  tone  of  inquiry. 

At  the  same  breath  in  which  she  realized  a 
kiss  was  of  no  importance  a  sharp  icy  pain  cut 
at  her  heart.  It  hurt  her  so  that  she  gasped. 
Then,  and  this  was  strange,  she  realized  that— 
as  a  kiss — it  hadn't  annoyed  her.  Suddenly  she 
felt  that  it  wasn't  just  that,  but  something  far 
more,  a  part  of  all  her  inner  longing.  He  had 
put  her  down  and  was  looking  away,  a  face  in 
shadow  with  an  ugly  protruding  lip. 

She  saw  him  that  way  in  her  dreams — in  the 
court  under  the  massive  somber  walls,  with  a 
troubled  frown  over  his  eyes.  It  seemed  to  her 
that,  reaching  up,  she  smoothed  it  away  as  they 
stood  together  in  a  darkness  with  the  fountains, 
the  hedges,  dead,  the  world  with  never  a  sound 
sleeping  in  the  prison  of  winter. 

[126] 


XVII 

LINDA  thought  about  Dodge  Pleydon  on 
a  warm  evening  of  the  following  May. 
At  four  o'clock,  in  a  hotel,  Pansy  had 
been  married ;  and  the  entire  Feldt  connection  had 
risen  to  a  greater  height  of  clamorous  cheer  than 
ever  before.  Extravagant  unseasonable  dishes, 
wines  and  banked  flowers  were  lavishly  mingled 
with  sentimental  speeches,  healths  and  tears. 
Linda  had  been  acutely  restless,  impatient  of  all 
the  loud  good  humor  and  stupid  compliments. 
The  sense  of  her  isolation  from  their  life  was  un 
bearably  keen.  She  would  have  a  very  different 
wedding  with  a  man  in  no  particular  like  Pansy's. 
After  dinner — an  occasion,  with  Pansy  absent, 
where  Mr.  Moses  Feldt's  tears  persisted  in  flow 
ing — she  had  strayed  into  the  formal  chamber 
across  from  the  dining-room  and  leaned  out  of  a 
window,  gazing  into  the  darkening  court.  Di 
rectly  below  was  where  Pleydon  had  kissed  her. 
She  often  re-examined  her  feelings  about  that; 
but  only  to  find  that  they  had  dissolved  into  an 
[127] 


LINDA   CONDON 

indefinite  sense  of  the  inevitable.  Not  alone  had 
it  failed  to  shock  her — she  hadn't  even  been  sur 
prised.  Linda  thought  still  further  about  kiss 
ing,  with  the  discovery  that  if,  while  it  was  hap 
pening,  she  was  conscious  of  the  kiss,  it  was  a 
failure;  successful,  it  carried  her  as  far  as  pos 
sible  from  the  actuality. 

Pleydon,  of  course,  had  not  written  to  her;  he 
had  intimated  nothing  to  the  contrary,  only  ask 
ing  her  to  let  him  know,  at  the  Harvard  Club,  if 
she  changed  address.  That  wasn't  necessary, 
and  now,  probably,  he  was  back  from  South 
America.  Where,  except  by  accident,  might  she 
see  him?  Markue,  with  his  parties,  had  dropped 
from  Judith's  world,  his  place  taken  by  a  serious 
older  dealer  in  Dutch  masters  with  an  impressive 
gallery  just  off  Fifth  Avenue. 

That  she  would  see  him  Linda  was  convinced; 
this  feeling  absorbed  any  desire;  it  was  no  good 
wanting  it  or  not  wanting  it;  consequently  she 
was  undisturbed.  She  considered  him  gravely 
and  in  detail.  Had  there  been  any  more 
Susanna  Nodas  in  his  stay  south?  She  had 
heard  somewhere  that  the  women  of  Argentine 
were  irresistible.  Her  life  had  taught  her  noth 
ing  if  not  the  fact  that  a  number  of  women  figured 
[128] 


LINDA   CONDON 

in  every  man's  history.  It  was  deplorable  but 
couldn't  be  avoided;  and  whether  or  not  it  con 
tinued  after  marriage  depended  on  the  cunning 
of  any  wife. 

Now,  however,  Linda  felt  weary  already  at 
the  prospect  of  a  married  life  that  rested  on  the 
constant  play  of  her  ingenuity.  A  great  many 
things  that,  but  a  little  before,  she  had  willingly 
accepted,  seemed  to  her  probably  not  less  neces 
sary  but  distinctly  tiresome.  Linda  began  to 
think  that  she  couldn't  really  bother;  the  results 
weren't  sufficiently  important. 

Dodge  Pleydon. 

She  slept  in  a  composed  order  until  the  sun 
was  well  up.  It  was  warmer  than  yesterday; 
and,  going  to  an  afternoon  concert  with  Judith, 
she  decided  to  walk.  Linda  strolled,  in  a  short 
severe  jacket  and  skirt,  a  black  straw  hat  turned 
back  with  a  cockade  and  a  crisp  flushed  mass 
of  sweet  peas  at  her  waist.  The  occasion,  as  it 
sometimes  happened,  found  her  in  no  mood  for 
music.  The  warmth  of  the  sunlight,  the  open 
city  windows  and  beginning  sounds  of  summer, 
had  enveloped  her  in  a  mood  in  which  the 
jangling  sentimentality  of  a  street  organ  was  more 
potent  than  the  legato  of  banked  violins. 
[129] 


LINDA   CONDON 

She  was  relieved  when  the  concert  was  over, 
but  lingered  at  her  seat  until  the  crowd  had 
surged  by;  it  made  Linda  furious  to  be  shoved  or 
indiscriminately  touched.  Judith  had  gone 
ahead,  when  Linda  was  conscious  of  the  scrutiny 
of  a  pale  well-dressed  woman  of  middle  age.  It 
became  evident  that  the  other  was  debating 
whether  or  not  to  speak;  clearly  such  an  action 
was  distasteful  to  her;  and  Linda  had  turned 
away  before  a  restrained  voice  addressed  her : 

"You  will  have  to  forgive  me  if  I  ask  your 
name  .  .  .  because  of  a  certain  resemblance. 
Seeing  you  I — I  couldn't  let  you  go." 

"Linda  Condon,"  she  replied. 

The  elder,  Linda  saw,  grew  even  paler.  She 
put  out  a  gloved  hand.  "Then  I  was  right,"  she 
said  in  a  slightly  unsteady  voice.  "But  perhaps, 
when  I  explain,  you  will  think  it  even  stranger, 
inexcusable.  My  dear  child,  I  am  your  father's 
sister." 

Linda  was  invaded  by  a  surprise  equally  made 
up  of  interest  and  resentment.  The  first  was 
her  own  and  the  second  largely  borrowed  from 
her  mother.  Besides,  why  had  her  father's  fam 
ily  never  made  the  slightest  effort  to  see  her. 
[130J 


LINDA    CONDON 

This  evidently  had  simultaneously  occurred  to 
the  other. 

"Of  course/'  she  added,  quite  properly,  "we 
can't  undertake  family  questions  here.  I 
shouldn't  blame  you  a  bit,  either,  if  you  went  di 
rectly  away.  I  had  to  speak,  to  risk  that,  be 
cause  you  were  so  unmistakably  a  Lowrie.  It  is 
not  a  common  appearance.  We — I — "  she 
floundered  for  a  painful  moment;  then  she  gath 
ered  herself  with  a  considerable  dignity.  "See 
ing  you  has  affected  me  tremendously,  changed 
everything.  I  have  nothing  to  say  in  our  de 
fense,  you  must  understand  that.  I  am  certain, 
too,  that  my  sister  will  feel  the  same — we  live  to 
gether  in  Philadelphia.  I  hope  you  will  give  me 
your  address  and  let  us  write  to  you.  Elouise 
will  join  with  me  absolutely." 

Linda  told  her  evenly  where  she  lived,  and 
then  allowed  Miss  Lowrie  to  precede  her  toward 
the  entrance.  She  said  nothing  of  this  to  Judith, 
nor,  momentarily,  to  her  mother.  She  wanted  to 
consider  it  undisturbed  by  a  flood  of  talk  and 
blame.  It  was  evident  to  her  that  the  Lowries 
had  behaved  very  badly,  but  just  how  she  couldn't 
make  out.  She  recalled  her  father's  sister — her 
[131] 


LINDA   CONDON 

aunt — minutely,  forced  to  the  realization  that 
she  was  a  person  of  entire  superiority.  Here, 
she  suddenly  saw,  had  been  the  cause  of  all 
their  difficulties — the  Lowries  hadn't  approved  of 
the  marriage,  they  had  objected  to  her  mother. 

Five  years  ago  she  would  have  been  incensed 
at  this ;  but  now,  essentially,  she  was  without  per 
sonal  indignation.  She  wanted,  for  herself,  to 
discover  as  much  as  possible  about  her  father  and 
his  family.  A  need  independent  of  maternal  in 
fluences  stirred  her.  Linda  was  reassured  by 
the  fact  that  her  father  had  been  gently  born; 
while  she  realized  that  she  had  always  taken  this 
for  granted.  Her  mother  must  know  nothing 
about  the  meeting  with  Miss  Lowrie  until  the 
latter  had  written. 

That  was  Friday  and  the  letter  came  the  fol 
lowing  Tuesday.  Linda,  alone  at  the  breakfast- 
table,  instantly  aware  of  the  source  of  the  square 
envelope  addressed  in  a  delicate  regular  writing, 
opened  it  and  read  in  an  unusual  mental  disturb 
ance: 

"My  dear  Linda, 

I  hope  you  will  not  consider  it  peculiar  for  me  to  call 

you  this,  for  nothing  else  seems  possible.     Meeting  you 

in  that  abrupt  manner  upset  me,  as  you  must  have  noticed. 

Of  course  I  knew  of  you,  and  even  now  I  can  not  go  into 

[132] 


LINDA   CONDON 

our  long  unhappy  affair,  but  until  I  saw  you,  and  so  re 
markably  like  the  Lowries,  I  did  not  realize  how  wicked 
Elouise  and  I  had  been.  But  I  am  obliged  to  add  only 
where  you  were  concerned.  We  have  no  desire  to  be  am 
biguous  in  that. 

However,  I  am  writing  to  say  that  we  should  love  to 
have  you  visit  us  here.  It  is  possible  under  the  circum 
stances  that  your  mother  will  not  wish  you  to  come.  Yet 
I  know  the  Lowries,  a  very  independent  and  decided  fam 
ily,  and  although  it  is  my  last  intention  to  be  the  cause  of 
difficulty  with  your  mother,  still  I  hope  it  may  be  ar 
ranged. 

In  closing  I  must  add  how  happy  I  was  at  the  evidence 
of  your  blood.  But  that,  I  now  see,  was  a  certainty. 
You  will  have  to  forgive  us  for  a  large  measure  of  blind 
ness.  Affectionately, 

AMELIA  VIGNE  LOWRIE." 

Almost  instantaneously  Linda  was  aware  that 
she  would  visit  the  Lowries.  She  liked  the  letter 
extremely,  as  well  as  all  that  she  remembered  of 
its  sender.  At  the  same  time  she  prepared  for  a 
scene  with  her  mother,  different  from  those  of 
the  past — with  the  recourse  to  the  brandy  flask — 
but  no  less  unpleasant.  They  had  very  little  to 
say  to  each  other  now;  and,  when  she  went  into 
her  mother's  room  with  an  evident  definite  pur 
pose,  the  latter  showed  a  constrained  surprise,  a 
palpable  annoyance  that  her  daughter  had  found 
her  at  the  daily  renovation  of  her  worn  face. 
[133] 


XVIII 

LINDA  said  directly,  "I  met  Miss  Lowrie, 
father's  sister,  at  a  concert  last  week,  and 
this  morning  I  had  a  letter  asking  me  to 
stay  with  them  in  Philadelphia." 

Mrs.  Feldt's  face  suddenly  had  no  need  for  the 
color  she  held  poised  on  a  cloth.  Her  voice, 
sharp  at  the  beginning,  rose  to  a  shrill  unre 
strained  wrath. 

"I  wonder  at  the  brass  of  her  speaking  to  you 
at  all  let  alone  writing  here.  Just  you  give  me 
the  letter  and  I'll  shut  her  up.  The  idea!  I 
hope  you  were  cool  to  her,  the  way  they  treated 
us.  Stay  with  them — I  guess  not!" 

"But  I  thought  of  going,"  Linda  replied.  "It's 
only  natural.  After  all,  you  must  see  that  he 
was  my  father." 

"A  pretty  father  he  was,  too  good  for  the  girl 
he  married.  It's  my  fault  I  didn't  tell  you  long 
ago,  but  I  just  couldn't  abide  the  mention  of  him. 
He  deserted  me,  no,  us,  cold,  without  a  word — 
walked  out  of  the  door  one  noon,  taking  his  hat 
[134] 


LINDA    CONDON 

as  quiet  as  natural,  and  never  came  back.  I 
never  saw  him  again  nor  heard  except  through 
lawyers.  That  was  the  kind  of  heart  he  had, 
and  his  sisters  are  worse.  I  hadn't  a  decent 
speech  of  any  kind  out  of  them.  The  Lowries," 
she  managed  to  inject  a  surprising  amount  of 
contempt  into  her  pronouncement  of  that  name. 
"What  it  was  all  about  you  nor  any  sensible  per 
son  would  never  believe: 

"The  house  smelled  a  little  of  boiled  cabbage. 
That's  why  he  left  me,  and  you  expected  in  a 
matter  of  a  few  months.  He  said  in  his  dam' 
frigid  way  that  it  had  become  quite  impossible 
and  took  down  his  hat." 

"There  must  have  been  more,"  Linda  pro 
tested,  suppressing  a  mad  desire  to  laugh. 

"Not  an  inch,"  her  mother  asserted.  "Noth 
ing,  after  a  little,  suited  him.  He'd  sit  up  like  a 
poker,  just  as  I've  seen  you,  with  his  lips  tight 
together  in  the  Lowrie  manner.  It  didn't  please 
him  no  matter  what  you'd  do.  He  wouldn't  blow 
out  at  you  like  a  Christian  and  I  never  knew 
where  I  was  at.  I'd  come  down  in  a  matinee, 
the  prettiest  I  could  buy,  and  then  see  he  didn't 
like  it.  He  would  expect  you  to  be  dressed  in 
the  morning  like  it  was  afternoon  and  you  going 
[135] 


LINDA    CONDON 

out.  And  as  for  loosening  your  corsets  for  a 
little  comfort  about  the  house,  you  might  as  well 
have  slapped  him  direct. 

"That  wasn't  the  worst,  though;  but  his  going 
away  without  as  much  as  a  flicker  of  his  hand; 
and  with  me  like  I  was.  Nobody  on  eai*th  but 
would  blame  him  for  that.  I  only  got  what  was 
allowed  me  after  we  had  changed  back  to  my  old 
name,  me  and  you.  He  never  asked  one  single 
question  about  you  nor  tried  to  see  or  serve  you 
a  scrap.  For  all  he  knew,  at  a  place  called  Santa 
Margharita  in  Italy,  you  might  have  been  born 
dead." 

She  was  unable,  Linda  recognized,  to  defend 
him  in  any  way;  he  had  acted  frightfully.  She 
acknowledged  this  logically  with  her  power  of 
reason,  but  somehow  it  didn't  touch  her  as  it  had 
her  mother,  and  as,  evidently,  the  latter  expected. 
She  was  absorbed  in  the  vision  of  her  father 
sitting,  in  the  Lowrie  manner,  rigid  as  a  poker; 
she  saw  him  quietly  take  up  his  hat  and  go  away 
forever.  Linda  understood  his  process  com 
pletely;  she  was  capable  of  doing  precisely  the 
same  thing.  Whatever  was  the  matter  with  her — 
in  the  heartlessness  so  often  laid  to  her  account — 
had  been  equally  true  of  her  father. 
[136] 


LINDA    CONDON 

"You  ought  to  know  what  to  say  to  them,"  Mrs. 
Moses  Feldt  cried,  "or  I'll  do  it  for  you!  If  only 
I  had  seen  her  she  would  have  heard  a  thing  or 
two  not  easy  forgotten." 

Linda's  determination  to  go  to  Philadelphia 
had  not  been  shaken,  and  she  made  a  vain  effort 
to  explain  her  attitude.  "Of  course,  it  was  horrid 
for  you,"  she  said.  "I  can  understand  how 
you'd  never  never  forgive  him.  But  I  am  dif 
ferent,  and,  I  expect,  not  at  all  nice.  It's  very 
possible,  since  he  was  my  father,  that  we  are 
alike.  I  wish  you  had  told  me  this  before — it 
explains  so  much  and  would  have  made  things 
easier  for  me.  I  am  afraid  I  must  see  them." 

She  was  aware  of  the  bitterness  and  enmity 
that  stiffened  her  mother  into  an  unaccustomed 
adequate  scorn: 

"I  might  have  expected  nothing  better  of  you, 
and  me  watching  it  coming  all  these  years.  You 
can  go  or  stay.  I  had  my  life  in  spite  of  the  both 
of  you,  as  gay  as  I  pleased  and  a  good  husband 
just  the  same.  I  don't  care  if  I  never  see  you 
again,  and  if  it  wasn't  for  the  fuss  it  would  make 
I'd  take  care  I  didn't.  You'll  have  your  father's 
money  now  I'm  married;  I  wonder  you  stay 
around  here  at  all  with  your  airs  of  being  better 
[137] 


LINDA   CONDON 

than  the  rest.  God's  truth  is  you  ain't  near  as 
good,  even  if  I  did  bring  you  into  the  world." 

"I  am  willing  to  agree  with  you,"  Linda  an 
swered.  "No  one  could  be  sweeter  than  the 
Feldts.  I  sha'n't  do  nearly  as  well.  But  that 
isn't  it,  really.  People  don't  choose  themselves; 
I'm  certain  father  didn't  at  that  lonely  Italian 
place.  If  you  weren't  happy  laced  in  the  morn 
ing  it  wasn't  your  fault.  You  see,  I  am  trying 
to  excuse  myself,  and  that  isn't  any  good,  either." 

"Unnatural,"  Mrs.  Moses  Feldt  pronounced. 
And  Linda,  weary  and  depressed,  allowed  her 
the  last  word. 


[138] 


XIX 

NOTHING  further  during  the  subsequent 
brief  exchange  of  notes  between  Miss 
Lowrie  and  Linda  was  said  of  the  lat- 
ter's  intention  to  visit  her  father's  family.  Mrs. 
Feldt,  however,  whose  attitude  toward  Linda  had 
been  negatively  polite,  now  displayed  an  ani 
mosity  carefully  hidden  from  her  husband  but 
evident  to  the  two  girls.  The  elder  never  neg 
lected  an  opportunity  to  emphasize  Linda's  sel 
fishness  or  make  her  personality  seem  ridiculous. 
But  this  Linda  ignored  from  her  wide  sense  of 
the  inconsequence  of  most  things. 

Yet  she  was  relieved  when,  finally,  she  had 
actually  left  New  York.  She  looked  forward 
with  an  unusual  hopeful  curiosity  to  the  Lowries. 
To  her  surprise  their  house — miles,  it  appeared, 
from  the  center  of  the  city — was  directly  on  a 
paved  street  with  electric  cars,  unpretentious  stores 
and  very  humble  dwellings  nearby.  Back  from 
the  thoroughfare,  however,  there  were  spacious 
green  lawns.  The  street  itself,  she  saw  at  once, 
[139] 


LINDA    CONDON 

was  old — a  highway  of  gray  stone  with  low  aged 
stone  facades,  steep  eaves  and  blackened  chim 
ney-pots  reaching,  dusty  with  years,  into  the 
farther  hilly  country. 

A  gable  of  the  Lowrie  house,  with  a  dignified 
white  door,  a  fanlight  of  faintly  iridescent  glass 
and  polished  brasses,  faced  the  brick  sidewalk, 
while  to  the  left  there  was  a  high  board  fence  and 
an  entrance  with  a  small  grille  open  on  a  somber 
reach  of  garden.  A  maid  in  a  stiff  white  cap  an 
swered  the  fall  of  the  knocker;  she  took  Linda's 
bag ;  and,  in  a  hall  that  impressed  her  by  its  bare 
ness,  Linda  was  greeted  by  the  Miss  Lowrie  she 
had  seen. 

Her  aunt  was  composed,  but  there  was  a  per 
ceptible  flush  on  her  cheeks,  and  she  said  in  a 
rapid  voice,  after  a  conventional  welcome,  "You 
must  meet  Elouise  at  once,  before  you  go  up  to 
your  room." 

Elouise  Lowrie  was  older  than  Amelia,  but  she, 
too,  was  slender  and  erect,  with  black  hair  star 
tling  in  its  density  on  her  wasted  countenance. 
Linda  noticed  a  fine  ruby  on  a  crooked  finger  and 
beautiful  rose  point  lace.  "It  was  good  of  you," 
the  elder  proceeded,  "to  come  and  see  two  old 
women.  I  don't  know  whether  we  have  more  to 
[140] 


LINDA   CONDON 

say  or  to  keep  still  about.  But  I,  for  one,  am 
going  to  avoid  explanations.  You  are  here,  a 
fool  could  see  that  you  were  Bartram's  girl,  and 
that  is  enough  for  a  Lowrie." 

The  room  was  nearly  as  bare  as  the  hall:  in 
place  of  the  deep  carpets  of  the  Feldts'  the  floor, 
of  dark  uneven  oak  boards,  was  merely  waxed  and 
covered  by  a  rough-looking  oval  rug.  The  walls 
were  paneled  in  white,  with  white  ruffled  curtains 
at  small  windows ;  and  the  furniture,  the  dull  ma 
hogany  ranged  against  the  immaculate  paint,  the 
rocking-chairs  of  high  slatted  walnut  and  rush 
bottoms,  the  slender  formality  of  tables  with 
fluted  legs,  was  dignified  but  austere.  There 
were  some  portraits  in  heavy  old  gijt — men  with 
florid  faces  and  tied  hair,  and  the  delicate  rep 
licas  of  high-breasted  women  in  brocades. 

There  was,  plainly,  an  air  of  the  exceptional 
in  Amelia  Lowrie's  conduction  of  Linda  to  her 
room.  She  waited  at  the  door  while  the  other 
moved  forward  to  the  center  of  a  chamber  empty 
of  all  the  luxury  Linda  had  grown  to  demand. 
There  was  a  bed  with  tall  graceful  posts  support 
ing  a  canopy  like  a  frosting  of  sugar,  a  solemn 
set  of  drawers  with  a  diminutive  framed  mirror 
in  which  she  could  barely  see  her  shoulders,  a 
[141] 


LINDA    CONDON 

small  unenclosed  brass  clock  with  long  exposed 
weights,  and  two  uninviting  painted  wooden 
chairs.  This  was  not,  although  very  nearly,  all. 
Linda's  attention  was  attracted  by  a  framed  and 
long-faded  photograph  of  a  young  man,  bare 
headed,  with  a  loosely  knotted  scarf,  a  striped 
blazer  and  white  flannels.  His  face  was  thin  and 
sensitive,  his  lips  level,  and  his  eyes  gazed  with 
a  steady  questioning  at  the  observer. 

"That  was  Bartram,"  Amelia  Lowrie  told  her; 
"your  father.  This  was  his  room." 

She  went  down  almost  immediately  and  left 
Linda,  in  a  maze  of  dim  emotions,  seated  on 
one  of  the  uncomfortable  painted  chairs.  Her 
father!  This  was  his  room;  nothing,  she  real 
ized,  had  been  disturbed.  The  mirror  had  held 
the  vaguely  unsteady  reflection  of  his  face;  he 
had  slept  under  the  arched  canopy  of  the  bed. 
She  rose  and  went  to  a  window  from  which  he, 
too,  had  looked. 

Below  her  was  the  garden  shut  in  on  its  front 
by  the  high  fence.  There  was  a  magnolia-tree, 
now  covered  with  thick  smooth  white  flowers,  and, 
at  the  back,  low-massed  rhododendron  with  fra 
gile  lavender  blossoms  on  a  dark  glossy  foliage. 
But  the  space  was  mainly  green  and  shadowed 
[142] 


LINDA    CONDON 

in  tone;  while  beyond  were  other  gardens,  other 
emerald  lawns  and  magnolia-trees,  an  ordered 
succession  of  tranquillity  with  separate  brick  or 
stone  or  white  dwellings  in  the  lengthening  after 
noon  shadows  of  vivid  maples. 

It  was  as  different  as  possible  from  all  that 
Linda  had  known,  from  the  elaborate  hotels  and 
gigantic  apartment  houses,  the  tropical  interiors, 
of  her  New  York  life.  She  unpacked  her  bag, 
putting  her  gold  toilet  things  on  the  chest  of 
drawers,  precisely  arranging  in  a  shullow  closet 
what  clothes  she  had  brought,  and  then,  changing, 
went  down  to  the  Lowries. 

They  surveyed  her  with  eminent  approval  at 
a  dinner-table  lighted  only  with  candles,  beside 
long  windows  open  on  a  dusk  with  a  glimmer  of 
fireflies.  Suddenly  Linda  felt  amazingly  at 
ease;  it  seemed  to  her  that  she  had  sat  here  be 
fore,  with  the  night  flowing  gently  in  over  the 
candle-flames.  The  conversation,  she  discov 
ered,  never  strayed  far  from  the  concerns  and 
importance  of  the  Lowrie  blood.  "My  grand 
mother,  Natalie  Vigne,"  Elouise  informed  her, 
"came  with  her  father  to  Philadelphia  from 
France,  in  eighteen  hundred  and  one,  at  the  in 
vitation  of  Stephen  Girard,  who  was  French  as 
[143] 


LINDA    CONDON 

well.  She  married  Hallet  Lowrie  whose  mother 
was  a  Bartram. 

"That,  my  dear,  explains  our  black  hair  and 
good  figgers.  There  never  was  a  lumpy  Lowrie. 
Well,  Hallet  built  this  house,  or  rather  enlarged 
it,  for  his  wife;  and  it  has  never  been  out  of  the 
family.  Our  nephew,  Arnaud  Hallet — Arnaud 
was  old  Vigne's  name — owns  it  now.  Isaac  Hal- 
let,  you  may  recall,  was  suspected  of  being  a 
Tory;  at  any  rate  his  brother's  descendants, 
Fanny  Rodwell  is  the  only  one  left,  won't  speak." 

The  placid  conversation  ran  on  unchanged 
throughout  dinner  and  the  evening.  Linda  was 
relieved  by  the  absence  of  any  questioning ;  indeed 
nothing  contemporary,  she  realized,  was  held  to 
be  significant.  "I  thought  Arnaud  would  be  in 
to-night,"  Elouise  Lowrie  said;  "he  knew  Linda 
was  expected."  No  one,  however,  appeared; 
and  Linda  went  up  early  to  her  room.  There, 
too,  were  only  candles,  a  pale  wavering  illumina 
tion  in  which  the  past,  her  father,  were  extraor 
dinarily  nearby.  A  sense  of  pride  was  com 
municated  to  her  by  so  much  that  time  had  been 
unable  to  shake.  The  bed  was  steeped  in  the 
magic  of  serene  traditions. 

[144] 


XX 

ARNAUD  HALLET  appeared  for  dinner 
the  evening  after  Linda's  arrival;  a 
quiet  man  with  his  youth  lost,  slightly 
stooped  shoulders,  crumpled  shoes  and  a  green 
cloth  bag.  But  he  had  a  memorable  voice  and 
an  easy  distinction  of  manner;  in  addition  to 
these  she  discovered,  at  the  table,  a  lighter  amus 
ing  sense  of  the  absurd.  She  watched  him — as 
he  poured  the  sherry  from  a  decanter  with  a 
silver  label  hung  on  a  chain — with  a  feeling  of 
mild  approbation.  On  the  whole  he  was  nice  but 
uninteresting.  What  a  different  man  from 
Pleydon! 

The  days  passed  in  a  pleasant  deliberation, 
with  Arnaud  Hallet  constantly  about  the  house 
or  garden,  while  Linda's  thoughts  continually  re 
turned  to  the  sculptor.  He  was  clearer  than  the 
actuality  of  her  mother  and  the  Feldts  or  the 
recreated  image  of  her  father.  At  times  she  was 
thrilled  by  the  familiar  obscure  sense  of  music, 
of  longing  slowly  translated  into  happiness. 
[145] 


LINDA   CONDON 

Then  more  actual  problems  would  envelop  her  in 
doubt.  Mostly  she  was  confused — in  her  cool 
material  necessity  for  understanding — by  the 
temper  of  her  feeling  for  Dodge  Pleydon.  Linda 
wondered  if  this  were  love.  Perhaps,  when  she 
saw  him  again,  she'd  be  able  to  decide.  Then 
she  remembered  promising  to  let  him  know  if  she 
changed  her  address.  It  was  possible  that  al 
ready  he  had  called  at  the  Feldts',  or  written, 
and  that  her  mother  had  refused  to  inform  him 
where  she  had  gone. 

Linda  had  been  at  the  Lowries'  two  weeks  now, 
but  they  were  acutely  distressed  when  she  sug 
gested  that  her  visit  was  unreasonably  prolonged. 
"My  dear,"  they  protested  together,  "we  hoped 
you'd  stay  the  summer.  Bartram's  girl!  Un 
less,  of  course,  it  is  dull  with  us.  Something 
brighter  must  be  arranged.  No  doubt  we  have 
only  thought  of  our  own  pleasure  in  having  you." 

Linda  replied  honestly  that  she  enjoyed  being 
with  them  extremely.  Her  mother's  dislike,  the 
heavy  luxury  of  the  Feldt  apartment,  held  little 
attraction  for  her.  Then,  too,  losing  the  sense 
of  the  bareness  of  the  house  Hallet  Lowrie  had 
built  for  his  French  wife,  she  began  to  find  it 
surprisingly  appealing. 

[146] 


LINDA   CONDON 

Her  mind  returned  to  her  promise  to  Pleydon. 
She  told  herself  that  probably  he  had  forgotten 
her  existence,  but  she  had  a  strong  unreasoning 
conviction  that  this  was  not  so.  It  seemed  the 
most  natural  thing  in  the  world  to  write  him  and, 
almost  before  she  was  aware  of  the  intention,  she 
had  put  "Dear  Mr.  Pleydon"  at  the  head  of  a 
sheet  of  note-paper. 

I  promised  to  let  you  know  in  the  spring  when  you  came 
back  from  South  America  where  I  was.  I  did  not  think  I 
would  have  to  do  it,  but  here  I  am  in  Philadelphia  with 
my  father's  sisters.  I  do  not  know  just  how  long  for,  but 
a  month  anyhow.  It  is  very  quiet,  but  charming.  I  have 
the  room  that  was  my  father's  when  he  was  young,  and 
look  out  of  the  window  like  he  must  have.  If  you  should 
come  to  Philadelphia  my  aunts  ask  me  to  say  that  they 
would  be  glad  to  have  you  for  dinner.  This  is  how  you 
get  here.  .  .  . 

Very  sincerely, 

LINDA  CONDON. 

She  walked  to  a  street  crossing,  where  she 
dropped  the  envelope  into  a  letter-box  on  a  lamp 
post,  and  returned  to  find  Arnaud  Hallet  waiting 
for  her.  He  said: 

"Everyone  agrees  I'm  serious,  but  actually  you 
are  worse  than  the  Assembly."  They  went 
[147] 


LINDA   CONDON 

through  the  dining-room  to  the  garden,  and  sat 
on  the  stone  step  of  a  deep  window.  It  was  quite 
late,  perhaps  eleven  o'clock,  and  the  fireflies, 
slowly  rising  into  the  night,  had  vanished. 
Linda  was  cool  and  remote  and  grave,  silently 
repeating  and  weighing  the  phrases  of  her  letter 
to  Pleydon. 

She  realized  that  Arnaud  Hallet  was  coming  to 
like  her  a  very  great  deal;  but  she  gave  this  only 
the  slightest  attention.  She  liked  him,  really, 
and  that  dismissed  him  from  serious  consider 
ation.  Anyhow,  in  spite  of  the  perfection  of  his 
manner,  Arnaud's  careless  dress  displeased  her: 
his  shoes  and  the  shoulders  of  his  coat  were  per 
petually  dusty,  and  his  hair,  growing  scant, 
was  always  ruffled.  Linda  understood  that  he 
was  highly  intellectual,  and  frequently  con 
tributed  historical  and  genealogical  papers  to  so 
cieties  and  bulletins,  but  compared  with  Dodge 
Pleydon's  brilliant  personality  and  reputation, 
Pleydon  surrounded  by  the  Susanna  Nodas  of 
life,  Arnaud  was  as  dingy  as  his  shoes. 

She  wondered  idly  when  the  latter  would  ac 
tually  try  to  love  her.  He  was  holding  her  hand 
and  it  might  well  be  to-night.  Linda  decided 
that  he  would  do  it  delicately;  and  when,  almost 
[148] 


LINDA    CONDON 

immediately,  he  kissed  her,  she  was  undisturbed. 
No,  surprisingly,  it  had  been  quite  pleasant.  He 
hadn't  mussed  her  ribbons,  nor  her  spirit,  a 
particle.  In  addition  he  did  not  at  once  become 
impossible  and  urgently  sentimental;  there  was 
even  a  shade  of  amusement  on  his  heavy  face. 

"You  appear  to  take  a  lot  for  granted,"  he 
complained. 

"I'd  been  wondering  when  it  would  happen," 
she  admitted  coolly. 

"It  always  does,  then?" 

"Usually  I  stop  it,"  she  continued.  "I  don't 
believe  I'll  ever  like  being  kissed.  Can  you  tell 
me  why?  No  one  ever  has;  they  all  think  they 
can  bring  me  around  to  it." 

"And  to  them,"  he  added. 

"But  they  end  by  being  furious  at  me.  I've 
been  sworn  at  -and  called  dreadful  names. 
Sometimes  they're  only  silly.  One  cried;  I 
hated  that  the  most." 

"Do  you  mean  that  you  were  sorry  for  him?" 

"Oh,  dear,  no.  Why  should  I  be?  He 
looked  so  odious  all  smeared  with  tears." 

Arnaud  Hallet  returned  promptly:  "Linda, 
you're  a  little  beast."  To  counteract  his  rude 
speech  he  kissed  her  again.  "This,"  he  said  with 
[149] 


LINDA   CONDON 

less  security,  "threatens  to  become  a  habit.  I 
thought,  at  forty-five,  that  I  was  safely  by  the 
island  of  sirens,  but  I'll  be  on  the  rocks  before  I 
know  it." 

She  laughed  with  the  cool  remoteness  of  run 
ning  water. 

"I  wonder  you  haven't  been  murdered,"  he 
proceeded,  "in  a  moonless  garden  by  an  elderly 
lawyer.  Do  you  ever  think  of  the  lyric  day 
when,  preceded  by  a  flock  of  bridesmaids  and 
other  flowery  pagan  truck,  you'll  meet  justice?" 

"Marriage?"  she  asked.  "But  of  course.  I 
have  everything  perfectly  planned — " 

"Then,  my  dear  Linda,  describe  him." 

"Very  straight,"  she  said,  "with  beautiful 
polished  shoes  and  brushed  hair." 

"You  ought  to  have  no  trouble  finding  that. 
Any  number  of  my  friends  have  one — to  open 
the  door  and  take  your  things.  I  might  arrange 
a  very  satisfactory  introduction  for  everybody 
concerned — a  steady  man  well  on  his  way  to  pre 
side  over  the  pantry  and  table." 

"You're  not  as  funny  as  usual,"  Linda  decided 
critically.  "That,  too,  disturbs  me,"  he  replied. 
"It  looks  even  more  unpromising  for  the  near 
future." 

[150] 


XXI 

IN  her  room  Linda   thought,  momentarily, 
of  Arnaud   Hallet;    whatever   might   have 
been  serious  in  her  attitude  toward  him  dis 
solved  by  the  lightness  of  his  speech.     Dodge 
Pleydon  appealed  irresistibly  to  her  deepest  feel 
ings.     Now  her  mental  confusion  was  at  least 
clear  in  that  she  knew  what  troubled  her.     It 
was  not  new,  it  extended  even  to  times  before 
Pleydon   had   entered   her  life — the   difficulties 
presented  by  the  term  "love." 

In  her  mind  it  was  divided  into  two  or  three 
widely  different  aspects,  phases  which  she  was  un 
able  to  reconcile.  Her  mother,  in  the  beginning, 
had  informed  her  that  love  was  a  nuisance.  To 
be  happy,  a  man  must  love  you  without  any  cor 
responding  return;  this  was  necessary  to  his 
complete  management,  the  securing  of  the  great 
est  possible  amount  of  new  clothes.  It  was  as 
far  as  love  should  be  allowed  to  enter  marriage. 
But  that  reality,  with  a  complete  expression  in 
shopping,  was  distant  from  the  immaterial  and 
[151] 


LINDA   CONDON 

delicate  emotions  that  in  her  responded  to  Pley- 
don. 

Linda  had  been  familiar  with  the  materials, 
the  processes,  of  what,  she  had  been  assured, 
was  veritable  love  since  early  childhood.  Her 
mother's  dressing,  the  irritable  hours  of  fittings 
and  at  her  mirror,  the  paint  she  put  on  her 
cheeks,  the  crimping  of  her  hair  were  for  the 
favor  of  men.  These  struggles  had  absorbed 
the  elder,  all  the  women  Linda  had  encountered, 
to  the  exclusion  of  everything  else.  This,  it 
seemed,  must,  from  its  overwhelming  predomi 
nance,  be  the  greatest  thing  in  life. 

There  was  nothing  mysterious  about  it.  You 
did  certain  things  intelligently,  if  you  had  the 
figure  to  do  them  with,  for  a  practical  end.  The 
latter,  carefully  controlled,  like  an  essence  of 
which  a  drop  was  delightful  and  more  positively 
stifling,  was  as  real  as  the  methods  of  approach. 
Oatmeal  or  scented  soap !  The  force  of  example 
and  association  combined  to  bathe  such  develop 
ments  in  the  sanest  light  possible,  and  Linda  had 
every  intention  of  the  successful  grasping  of  an 
easy  and  necessary  luxury.  She  had,  until — 
vaguely — now,  been  entirely  willing  to  accept  the 
unescapable  conditions  of  love  used  as  a  means 
[152] 


LINDA   CONDON 

or  the  element  of  pleasure  at  parties.  Now,  how 
ever,  the  unexpected  element  of  Dodge  Pleydon 
disturbed  her  philosophy. 

Suddenly  all  the  lacing  and  painting  and 
crimping,  the  pretense  and  lies  and  carefully 
planned  accidental  effects,  filled  her  with  revolt. 
The  insinuations  of  women,  the  bareness  of  their 
revelations,  her  mother  returning  unsteady  and 
mussed  from  a  dinner,  were  unutterably  disgust 
ing.  Even  to  think  of  them  hurt  her  funda 
mentally:  so  much  of  what  she  was,  of  what  she 
had  determined,  had  been  destroyed  by  an 
emotion  apparently  as  slight  as  echoed  music. 

Here  was  the  real  mystery  and  for  which  noth 
ing  in  her  experience  had  prepared  her.  She  be 
gan  to  see  why  it  was  called  a  nuisance — if  this 
were  love — and  wondered  if  she  had  better  not 
suppress  it  at  once.  It  wouldn't  be  suppressed. 
Her  thoughts  continually  came  back  to  Pleydon, 
and  the  warmth,  the  disturbing  thrill,  always  re 
sulted.  It  led  her  away  from  herself,  from 
Linda  Condon;  a  sufficiently  strange  accomplish 
ment.  A  concern  for  Dodge  Pleydon,  little 
schemes  for  his  happiness  and  well-being,  put 
aside  her  clothes  and  complexion  and  her  future. 

Until  the  present  her  acts  had  been  the  result 
[153] 


LINDA   CONDON 

of  deliberation.  She  had  been  impressed  by  the 
necessity  for  planning  with  care;  but,  in  the  cool 
gloom  of  the  covered  bed,  a  sharp  joy  held  her  at 
the  possibility  of  flinging  caution  away.  Yet 
she  couldn't  quite,  no  matter  how  much  she  de 
sired  it,  lose  herself.  Linda  was  glad  that 
Pleydon  was  rich;  and  there  were,  she  remem 
bered,  moments  for  surrender. 

As  usual  these  problems,  multiplying  toward 
night,  were  fewer  in  the  bright  flood  of  morning. 
She  laughed  at  the  memory  of  Arnaud  Hallefs 
humor;  and  then,  it  was  late  afternoon,  the  maid 
told  her  that  Pleydon  was  in  the  drawing  room. 
Her  appearance  satisfactory  she  was  able  to  see 
him  at  once.  To  her  great  pleasure  neither  Pley 
don  nor  his  clothes  had  changed.  He  was  dressed 
in  light-gray  flannels;  a  big  easy  man  with  a 
crushing  palm,  large  features  and  an  expression 
of  intolerance. 

"Linda,"  he  said,  "what  a  splendid  place  to 
find  you.  So  much  better  than  Markue's."  He 
was,  she  realized,  very  glad  to  see  her,  and 
dropped  at  once,  as  if  they  had  been  uninter 
ruptedly  together,  into  intimate  talk.  "My  work 
has  been  going  badly,"  he  proceeded;  "or  rather 
not  at  all.  I  made  a  rather  decent  fountain  at 
[154] 


LINDA   CONDON 

Newport;  but — remember  what  Susanna  said? — 
it's  not  in  the  first  rank.  A  happy  balance  and 
strong  enough  conception;  yet  it  is  like  a  Cellini 
ewer  done  in  granite.  The  truth  is,  too  much  in 
terests  me;  an  artist  ought  to  be  the  victim  of 
a  monomania.  I'm  a  normal  animal."  He 
studied  her  contentedly: 

"How  lovely  you  are.  I  came  over — in  an 
automobile  at  last — because  I  was  certain  you 
couldn't  exist  as  I  remembered  you.  But  you 
could  and  do.  Lovely  Linda!  And  what  a 
gem  of  a  letter.  It  might  have  been  copied  from 
'The  Perfect  Correspondent  for  Young  Females.7 
You're  not  going  to  lose  me  again.  When  I  was 
a  little  boy  I  had  a  passion  for  sherbets." 

She  smiled  at  him  with  half-closed  eyes  and 
the  conviction  that,  with  Pleydon,  she  could  easily 
be  different.  He  leaned  forward  and  his  voice 
startled  her  with  the  impression  that  he  had  read 
her  mind : 

"If  you  could  care  for  any  one  a  lifetime 
would  be  short  to  get  you.  Look,  you  have  never 
been  out  of  my  thoughts — or  within  my  reach.  It 
seems  a  myth  that  I  kissed  you;  impossible  .  .  . 
Linda." 

"But  you  did,"  she  told  him,  gaining  happi- 
[155] 


LINDA    CONDON 

ness  from  the  mere  assurance.  They  were  alone 
in  the  drawing-room,  and  he  rose,  sweeping  her 
up  into  his  arms.  Yet  the  expected  joy  evaded 
her  desire  and  the  sudden  determination  to  lose 
utterly  her  reserve.  It  was  evident  that  he  as  well 
was  conscious  of  this,  for  he  released  her  and 
stood  frowning,  his  protruding  lower  lip  uglier 
than  ever. 

"A  lifetime  would  be  nothing,"  he  said  again; 
"or  it  might  be  everything  wasted.  Which  are 
you — all  soul  and  spirit,  or  none?" 

"I  don't  know,"  she  replied,  in  her  bitter  dis 
appointment,  her  heart  pinched  by  the  sharpest 
pain  she  remembered.  There  was  the  stir  of 
skirts  at  the  door;  Linda  turned  with  a  sense  of 
relief  to  Amelia  Lowrie.  However,  dinner  pro 
gressed  very  well  indeed.  "Then  your  aunt," 
Elouise  said  to  Pleydon,  "was  Carrie  Dodge.  I 
recall  her  perfectly."  That  established,  the 
Lowrie  women  talked  with  a  gracious  freedom, 
exploring  the  furthermost  infiltrations  of  blood 
and  marriages. 

Linda  was  again  serene.  She  watched  Pley 
don  with  an  extraordinary  formless  conviction — 
each  of  them  was  a  part  of  the  other's  life;  while 
in  some  way  marriage  and  love  were  now  hope- 
[156] 


LINDA   CONDON 

lessly  confused.  It  was  beyond  effort  or  plan 
ning.  That  was  all  she  could  grasp,  but  she  was 
contented.  Sometimes  when  he  talked  he  made 
the  familiar  descriptive  gesture  with  his  hand,  as 
if  he  were  shaping  the  form  of  his  speech :  a  sculp 
tor's  gesture,  Linda  realized. 

Later  they  wandered  into  the  garden,  a  dark 
enclosure  with  the  long  ivy-covered  fagade  of  the 
house  broken  by  the  lighted  spaces  of  windows. 
Beyond  the  fence  at  regular  intervals  an  electric 
car  passed  with  an  increasing  and  diminishing 
clangor.  The  white  petals  of  the  magnolia-tree 
had  fallen  and  been  wheeled  away;  the  blossoms 
of  the  rhododendron  were  dead  on  their  stems. 
It  was,  Linda  felt,  a  very  old  garden  that  had 
known  many  momentary  emotions  and  lives. 

Dodge  Pleydon,  standing  before  her,  put  his 
hands  on  her  shoulders.  "Would  I  have  any  suc 
cess?"  he  asked.  "Do  you  think  you'd  care  for 
me?" 

She  smiled  confidently  up  at  his  intent  face. 
"Oh,  yes."  Yet  she  hoped  that  he  would  not 
kiss  her — just  then.  The  delicacy  of  her  longing 
and  need  were  far  removed  from  material  expres 
sions.  This,  of  course,  meant  marriage;  but 
marriage  was  money,  comfort,  the  cold  thing  her 
[157] 


LINDA   CONDON 

mother  had  impressed  on  her.  Love,  her  love, 
was  a  mistake  here.  But  in  a  little  it  would  all 
come  straight  and  she  would  understand.  She  no 
longer  had  confidence  in  her  mother's  wisdom. 

In  spite  of  her  shrinking,  of  a  half  articulate 
appeal,  he  crushed  her  against  his  face.  What 
ever  that  had  filled  her  with  hope,  she  thought,  was 
being  torn  from  her.  A  sickening  aversion  over 
which  she  had  no  control  made  her  stark  in  his 
arms.  The  memories  of  the  painted  coarse  sa 
tiety  of  women  and  the  sly  hard  men  for  which 
they  schemed,  the  loose  discussions  of  calculated 
advances  and  sordid  surrenders,  flooded  her  with 
a  loathing  for  what  she  passionately  needed  to  be 
beautiful. 

Yet  deep  within  her,  surprising  in  its  vitality,  a 
fragile  ardor  persisted.  If  she  could  explain, 
not  only  might  he  understand,  but  be  able  to 
make  her  own  longing  clear  and  secure.  But 
all  she  managed  to  say  was,  "If  you  kiss  me 
again  I  think  it  will  kill  me."  Even  that  failed 
to  stop  him.  "You  were  never  alive,"  he  as 
serted.  "I'll  put  some  feeling  into  you.  It  has 
been  done  before  with  marble." 

Linda,  unresponsive,  suffered  inordinately. 

Again  on  her  feet  she  saw  that  Pleydon  was 
£158] 


LINDA   CONDON 

angry,  his  face  grim.  He  seemed  changed, 
threatening  and  unfamiliar;  it  was  exactly  as  if, 
in  place  of  Dodge  Pleydon,  a  secretive  imper 
sonal  ugliness  stood  disclosed  before  her.  He 
said  harshly: 

"When  will  you  marry  me?" 

It  was  what,  above  all  else,  she  had  wanted; 
and  Linda  realized  that  to  marry  him  was  still  the 
crown  of  whatever  happiness  she  could  imagine. 
But  her  horror  of  the  past  recreated  by  his  beating 
down  of  her  gossamer-like  aspiration,  the  vision 
of  him  flushed  and  ruthless,  an  image  of  indis 
criminate  nameless  man,  made  it  impossible  for 
her  to  reply.  An  abandon  of  shrinking  fear 
numbed  her  heart  and  lips. 

"You  won't  get  rid  of  me  as  you  do  the  others 
about  you,"  he  continued.  "This  time  you  made 
a  mistake.  I  haven't  any  pride  that  you  can  in 
sult;  but  I  have  all  that  you — with  your  char 
acter — require.  I  have  more  money  even  than 
you  can  want."  She  cried  despairingly: 

"It  isn't  that  now!  I  had  forgotten  everything 
to  do  with  money  and  depended  on  you  to  take 
me  away  from  it  always." 

"When  will  you  marry  me?" 

In  a  flash  of  blinding  perception,  leaving  her 
[159] 


LINDA   CONDON 

as  dazed  as  though  it  had  been  a  physical  ac 
tuality,  she  realized  that  marrying  him  had  be 
come  an  impossibility.  At  the  barest  thought  of 
it  the  dread  again  closed  about  her  like  ice.  She 
tried,  with  all  the  force  of  old  valuations,  with 
even  an  effort  to  summon  back  the  vanquished 
thrill,  to  give  herself  to  him.  But  a  quality  over 
powering  and  instinctive,  the  response  of  her  in 
calculable  injury,  made  any  contact  with  him 
hateful.  It  was  utterly  beyond  her  power  to  ex 
plain.  A  greater  mystery  still  partly  unfolded — 
whatever  she  had  hoped  from  Pleydon  belonged 
to  the  special  emotion  that  had  possessed  her 
since  earliest  childhood. 

In  the  immediate  tragedy  of  her  helplessness, 
with  Dodge  Pleydon  impatient  for  an  assurance, 
she  paused  involuntarily  to  wonder  about  that 
hidden  imperative  sense.  There  was  a  broken 
mental  fantasy  of — of  a  leopard  bearing  a 
woman  in  shining  hair.  This  was  succeeded  by 
a  bright  thrust  of  happiness  and,  all  about  her, 
a  surging  like  the  imagined  beat  of  the  wings  of 
the  Victory  in  Markue's  room.  Almost  Pleydon 
had  explained  everything,  almost  he  was  every 
thing  ;  and  then  the  other,  putting  him  aside,  had 
[160] 


LINDA    CONDON 

swept  her  back  into  the  misery  of  doubt  and  lone 
liness. 

"I  can't  marry  you,"  she  said  in  a  flat  and 
dragged  voice.  He  demanded  abruptly: 

"Why  not?" 

"I  don't  know."  She  recognized  his  utter 
right  to  the  temper  that  mastered  him.  For  a 
moment  Linda  thought  Pleydon  would  shake  her. 
"You  feel  that  way  now,"  he  declared;  "and 
perhaps  next  month;  but  you  will  change;  in  the 
end  I'll  have  you." 

"No,"  she  told  him,  with  a  certainty  from  a 
source  outside  her  consciousness.  "It  has  been 
spoiled." 

He  replied,  "Time  will  discover  which  of  us  is 
right.  I'm  almost  willing  to  stay  away  till  you 
send  for  me.  But  that  would  only  make  you 
more  stubborn.  What  a  strong  little  devil  you 
are,  Linda.  I  have  no  doubt  I'd  do  better  to 
marry  a  human  being.  Then  I  think  we  both 
forget  how  young  you  are — you  can't  pretend  to 
be  definite  yet." 

He  captured  her  hands;  too  exhausted  for 
any  resentment  or  feeling  she  made  no  effort  to 
evade  him.  "I'll  never  say  good-bye  to  you." 
[161] 


LINDA   CONDON 

His  voice  had  the  absolute  quality  of  her  own 
conviction.  To  her  amazement  her  cheeks  were 
suddenly  wet  with  tears.  "I  want  to  go  now," 
she  said  unsteadily;  "and — and  thank  you." 

His  old  easy  formality  returned  as  he  made 
his  departure.  In  reply  to  Pleydon's  demand 
she  told  him  listlessly  that  she  would  be  here  for, 
perhaps,  a  week  longer.  Then  he'd  see  her,  he 
continued,  in  New  York,  at  the  Feldts'. 

In  her  room  all  emotion  faded.  Pleydon  had 
said  that  she  was  still  young ;  but  she  was  sure  she 
could  never,  in  experience  or  feeling,  be  older. 
She  became  sorry  for  herself;  or  rather  for  the 
illusions,  the  Linda,  of  a  few  hours  ago.  She 
examined  her  features  in  the  limited  uncertain 
mirror — strong  sensations,  she  knew,  were  a 
charge  on  the  appearance — but  she  was  unable 
to  find  any  difference  in  her  regular  pallor. 
Then,  mechanically  conducting  her  careful  prep 
arations  for  the  night,  her  propitiation  of  the  only 
omnipotence  she  knew,  she  put  out  the  candles  of 
her  May. 


[162] 


XXII 

IT  "IT  THAT  welcome  Linda  met  in  New 
%/%/  York  came  from  Mr.  Moses  Feldt, 

T  T  who  embraced  her  warmly  enough, 
but  with  an  air  slightly  ill  at  ease.  He  begged 
her  to  kiss  her  mama,  who  was  sometimes  hurt 
by  Linda's  coldness.  She  made  no  reply,  and 
found  the  same  influence  and  evidence  of  the 
power  of  suggestion  in  Judith.  "We  thought 
maybe  you  wouldn't  care  to  come  back  here,"  the 
latter  said  pointedly,  over  her  shoulder,  while  she 
was  directing  the  packing  of  a  trunk.  The  Feldts 
were  preparing  for  their  summer  stay  at  the  sea. 

Her  mother's  room  resembled  one  of  the  sales 
of  obvious  and  expensive  attire  conducted  in  the 
lower  salons  of  pleasure  hotels.  There  were  airy 
piles  of  chiffon  and  satin,  inappropriate  hats  and 
the  inevitable  confections  of  silk  and  lace.  "It's 
not  necessary  to  ask  if  you  were  right  at  home 
with  your  father's  family,"  Mrs.  Condon  ob 
served  with  an  assumed  casual  inattention.  "I 
can  see  you  sitting  with  those  old  women  as  dry 
[163] 


LINDA    CONDON 

and  false  as  any.  No  one  saved  me  in  the  clack 
ing,  I'm  sure." 

"We  didn't  speak  of  you,"  Linda  replied.  She 
studied,  unsparing,  the  loose  flesh  of  the  elder's 
ravaged  countenance.  Her  mother,  she  recog 
nized,  hated  her,  both  because  she  was  like  Bart- 
ram  Lowrie  and  still  young,  with  everything  un 
spent  that  the  other  valued  and  had  lost.  In 
support  of  herself  Mrs.  Feldt  asserted  again  that 
she  had  "lived,"  with  stacks  of  friends  and  flow 
ers,  lavish  parties  and  devoted  attendance. 

"You  may  be  smarter  than  I  was,"  she  went 
on,  "but  what  good  it  does  you  who  can  say? 
And  if  you  expect  to  get  something  for  nothing 
you're  fooled  before  you  start."  She  shook  out 
the  airy  breadths  of  a  vivid  echo  of  past  dar 
ing.  "From  the  way  you  act  a  person  might 
think  you  were  pretty,  but  you  are  too  thin  and 
pulled  out.  I've  heard  your  looks  called  pe 
culiar,  and  that  was,  in  a  manner  of  speaking, 
polite.  You're  not  even  stylish  any  more — the 
line  is  full  again  and  not  suitable  for  bony  shoul 
ders  and  no  bust."  She  still  cherished  a  com 
placency  in  her  amplitude. 

Linda  turned  away  unmoved.  Of  all  the 
world,  she  thought,  only  Dodge  Pleydon  had  the 
[164] 


LINDA   CONDON 

power  actually  to  hurt  her.  She  knew  that  she 
would  see  him  soon  again  and  that  again  he  would 
ask  her  to  marry  him.  She  considered,  momen 
tarily,  the  possibility  of  saying  yes ;  and  instantly 
the  dread  born  with  him  in  the  Lowrie  garden 
swept  over  her.  Linda  told  herself  that  he  was 
the  only  man  for  whom  she  could  ever  deeply  care ; 
that — for  every  conceivable  reason — such  a  mar 
riage  was  perfect.  But  the  shrinking  from  its  im 
plications  grew  too  painful  for  support. 

Her  mother's  bitterness  increased  hourly;  she 
no  longer  hid  her  feelings  from  her  husband  and 
Judith;  and  dinner,  accompanied  by  her  elab 
orate  sarcasm,  was  a  difficult  period  in  which, 
plainly,  Mr.  Moses  Feldt  suffered  most  and  Linda 
was  the  least  concerned.  This  condition,  she  ad 
mitted  silently,  couldn't  go  on  indefinitely;  it 
was  too  vulgar  if  for  no  other  reason.  And  she 
determined  to  ask  the  Lowries  for  another  and 
more  extended  invitation. 

Pleydon  came,  as  she  had  expected,  and  they 
sat  in  the  small  reception-room  with  the  high 
ceiling  and  dark  velvet  hangings,  the  piano  at 
which,  long  ago  it  now  seemed,  Judith  had  played 
the  airs  of  Gluck  for  her.  He  said  little,  but  re 
mained  for  a  long  while  spread  over  the  divan 
[165] 


LINDA   CONDON 

and  watching  her — in  a  formal  chair — discon 
tentedly.  He  rose  suddenly  and  stood  above  her, 
a  domineering  bulk  obliterating  nearly  everything 
else.  In  response  to  his  demand  she  said,  pale 
and  composed,  that  she  was  not  "reasonable"; 
she  omitted  the  "yet"  included  in  his  question. 
Pleydon  frowned.  However,  then,  he  insisted  no 
further. 

When  he  had  gone  Linda  was  as  spent  as 
though  there  had  been  a  fresh  brutal  scene;  and 
the  following  day  she  was  enveloped  in  an  un 
relieved  depression.  Her  mother  mocked  her 
silence  as  another  evidence  of  ridiculous  preten 
tiousness.  Mr.  Moses  Feldt  regarded  her  with 
a  furtive  concerned  kindliness;  while  Judith  fol 
lowed  her  with  countless  small  irritating  com 
plaints.  It  was  the  last  day  at  the  apartment 
before  their  departure  for  the  summer.  Linda 
was  insuperably  tired.  She  had  gone  to  her 
room  almost  directly  after  dinner,  and  when  a 
maid  came  to  her  door  with  a  card,  she  exclaimed, 
before  looking  at  it,  that  she  was  not  in.  It 
was,  however,  Arnaud  Hallet;  and,  with  a  sur 
prise  tempered  by  a  faint  interest,  she  told  the 
servant  that  she  would  see  him. 
[166] 


LINDA   CONDON 

There  was,  Linda  observed  at  once,  absolutely 
no  difference  in  Arnaud's  clothing,  no  effort  to 
make  himself  presentable  for  New  York  or  her. 
In  a  way,  it  amused  her — it  was  so  characteristic 
of  his  forgetfulness,  and  it  made  him  seem 
doubly  familiar.  He  waved  a  hand  toward  the 
luxury  of  the  interior.  "This,"  he  declared,  "is 
downright  impressive,  and  lifted,  I'm  sure,  out  of 
a  novel  of  Ouida's. 

"You  will  remember,"  he  continued,  "com 
plaining  about  my  sense  of  humor  one  evening; 
and  that,  at  the  time,  I  warned  you  it  might  grow 
worse.  It  has.  I  am  afraid,  where  you  are  con 
cerned,  that  it  has  absolutely  vanished.  My 
dear,  you'll  recognize  this  as  a  proposal.  I 
thought  my  mind  was  made  up,  after  forty,  not 
to  marry;  and  I  specially  tried  not  to  bring  you 
into  it.  You  were  too  young,  I  felt.  I  doubted 
if  I  could  make  you  happy,  and  did  everything 
possible,  exhausted  all  the  arguments,  but  it  was 
no  good. 

"Linda,  dear,  I  adore  you." 

She  was  glad,  without  the  slightest  answering 
emotion,  that  Arnaud,  well — liked  her.  At  the 
same  time  all  her  wisdom  declared  that  she 
[167] 


LINDA    CONDON 

couldn't  marry  him;  and,  with  the  unsparing 
frankness  of  youth  and  her  individual  detach 
ment,  she  told  him  exactly  why. 

"I  need  a  great  deal  of  money,"  she  proceeded, 
"because  I  am  frightfully  extravagant.  All  I 
have  is  expensive;  I  hate  cheap  things — even 
what  satisfies  most  rich  girls.  Why,  just  my  satin 
slippers  cost  hundreds  of  dollars  and  I'll  pay  un 
limited  amounts  for  a  little  fulling  of  lace  or 
some  rare  flowers.  You'd  call  it  wicked,  but  I 
can't  help  it — it's  me. 

"I've  always  intended  to  marry  a  man  with  a 
hundred  thousand  dollars  a  year.  Of  course, 
that's  a  lot — do  you  hate  me  for  telling  you? — 
but  I  wouldn't  think  of  any  one  with  less  than 
fifty—" 

Arnaud  Hallet  interrupted  quietly,  "I  have 
that." 

Linda  gazed  incredulously  at  his  neglected 
shoes,  the  wrinkles  of  his  inconsiderable  coat  and 
unstudied  scarf.  She  saw  that,  actually,  he  had 
spoken  apologetically  of  his  possessions;  and  a 
stinging  shame  spread  through  her  at  the  possi 
bility  that  she  had  seemed  common  to  an  infinitely 
finer  delicacy  than  hers. 

[168] 


XXIII 

MOST  of  these  circumstances  Linda  Hal- 
let  quietly  recalled  sitting  with  her 
husband  in  the  house  that  had  been  oc 
cupied  by  the  Lowries'.  A  letter  from  Pleydon 
had  taken  her  into  a  past  seven  years  gone  by; 
while  ordinarily  her  memory  was  indistinct;  or 
dinarily  she  was  fully  occupied  by  the  difficulties, 
or  rather  compromises,  of  the  present.  But,  in  the 
tranquil  open  glow  of  a  Franklin  stove  and  the 
withdrawn  intentness  of  Arnaud  reading,  her 
mind  had  returned  to  the  distressed  period  of  her 
wedding. 

Elouise  Lowrie — Amelia  was  dead — sunk  in  a 
stupor  of  extreme  old  age,  her  bloodless  hands 
folded  in  an  irreproachable  black  surah  silk  lap, 
sat  beyond  the  stove;  and  Lowrie,  Linda's  elder 
child,  five  and  a  half,  together  with  his  sister 
Vigne,  had  been  long  asleep  above.  Linda  was 
privately  relieved  by  this:  her  children  presented 
enormous  obligations.  The  boy,  already  at  a 
model  school,  appalled  her  inadequate  prepara- 
[169] 


LINDA   CONDON 

tions  by  his  flashes  of  perceptive  intelligence; 
while  she  was  frankly  abashed  at  the  delicate 
rosy  perfection  of  her  daughter. 

The  present  letter  was  the  third  she  had  re 
ceived  from  Dodge  Pleydon,  whom  she  had  not 
seen  since  her  marriage.  At  first  he  had  been  en 
raged  at  the  wrong,  he  had  every  reason  to  feel, 
she  had  done  him.  Then  his  anger  had  dis 
solved  into  a  meager  correspondence  of  outward 
and  obvious  facts.  There  was  so  much  that  she 
had  been  unable  to  explain.  He  had  always 
been  impatient,  even  contemptuous,  of  the  emo 
tion  that  made  her  surrender  to  him  unthinkable 
— Linda  realized  now  that  it  had  been  the  strong 
est  impulse  of  her  life — and,  of  course,  she  had 
never  accounted  for  the  practically  unbalanced 
enmity  of  her  mother. 

The  latter  had  deepened  to  an  incredible  de 
gree,  so  much  so  that  Mr.  Moses  Feldt,  though 
he  had  never  taken  an  actual  part  in  it — such 
bitterness  was  entirely  outside  his  generous  senti 
mentality — had  become  acutely  uncomfortable  in 
his  own  home,  imploring  Linda,  with  ready  tears, 
to  be  kinder  to  her  mama.  Judith,  too,  had 
grown  cutting,  jealous  of  Linda's  serenity  of 
youth,  as  her  appearance  showed  the  effect  of  her 
[170] 


LINDA   CONDON 

wasting  emotions.  Things  quite  extraordinary 
had  happened :  once  Linda's  skin  had  been  almost 
seriously  affected  by  an  irritation  that  immedi 
ately  followed  the  trace  of  her  powder-puff;  and 
at  several  times  she  had  had  clumsily  composed 
anonymous  notes  of  a  most  distressing  nature. 

She  had  wondered,  calmly  enough,  which  of  the 
two  bitter  women  were  responsible,  and  decided 
that  it  was  her  mother.  At  this  the  situation  at 
the  Feldts',  increasingly  strained,  had  become  an 
impossibility.  Arnaud  Hallet,  after  his  first  visit, 
had  soon  returned.  There  was  no  more  mention 
of  his  money ;  but  every  time  he  saw  her  he  asked 
her  again,  in  his  special  manner — a  formality 
flavored  by  a  slight  diffident  humor — to  marry 
him.  Arnaud's  proposals  had  alternated  with 
Pley don's  utterly  different  demand. 

Linda  remembered  agonized  evenings  when,  in 
a  return  of  his  brutal  manner  of  the  unforgettable 
night  in  the  Lowrie  garden,  he  tried  to  force  a 
recognition  of  his  passion.  It  had  left  her  cold, 
exhausted,  the  victim  of  a  mingled  disappoint 
ment  at  her  failure  to  respond  with  a  hatred  of 
all  essential  existence.  At  last,  on  a  particularly 
trying  occasion,  she  had  desperately  agreed  to 
marry  him. 

[171] 


LINDA   CONDON 

The  aversion  of  her  mother,  becoming  really 
dangerous,  had  finally  appalled  her;  and  a  head 
ache  weighed  on  her  with  a  leaden  pain.  Dodge, 
too,  had  been  unusually  considerate;  he  talked 
about  the  future — tied  up,  he  asserted,  in  her — of 
his  work;  and  suddenly,  at  the  signal  of  her  rare 
tears,  Linda  agreed  to  a  wedding. 

In  the  middle  of  the  night  she  had  wakened 
oppressed  by  a  dread  resulting  in  an  uncontrol 
lable  chill.  She  thought  first  that  her  mother  was 
bending  a  malignant  face  over  her;  and  then 
realized  that  her  feeling  was  caused  by  her  promise 
to  Dodge  Pleydon.  It  had  grown  worse  instead 
of  vanishing,  waves  of  nameless  shrinking  swept 
over  her;  and  in  the  morning,  further  harrowed 
by  the  actualities  of  being,  she  had  sent  a  telegram 
to  Arnaud  Hallet — to  Arnaud's  kindness  and  af 
fection,  his  detachment  not  unlike  her  own. 

They  were  married  immediately;  and  through 
the  ceremony  and  the  succeeding  days  she 
had  been  almost  entirely  absorbed  in  a  sensa 
tion  of  escape.  At  the  death  of  Amelia  Lowrie, 
soon  after,  Arnaud  had  suggested  a  temporary 
period  in  the  house  she  remembered  with  pleas 
ure;  and,  making  small  alterations  with  the 
[172] 


LINDA   CONDON 

months  and  years,  they  had  tacitly  agreed  to  re 
main. 

Linda  often  wondered,  walking  about  the 
lower  floor,  why  it  seemed  so  familiar  to  her: 
she  would  stand  in  the  dining-room,  with  its 
ceiling  of  darkened  beams,  and  gaze  absent- 
minded  through  the  long  windows  at  the  close- 
cut  walled  greenery  without.  The  formal  draw 
ing-room,  at  the  right  of  the  street  entrance, 
equally  held  her — a  cool  interior  with  slatted 
wooden  blinds,  a  white  mantelpiece  with  deli 
cately  reeded  supports  and  a  bas-relief  of  Mi 
nerva  on  the  center  panel,  a  polished  brass  scuttle 
for  cannel-coal  and  chairs  with  wide  severely 
fretted  backs  upholstered  in  old  pale  damask. 

The  house  seemed  familiar,  but  she  could 
never  grow  accustomed  to  the  undeniable  facts  of 
her  husband,  the  children  and  her  completely 
changed  atmosphere.  She  admitted  to  herself 
that  her  principal  feeling  in  connection  with 
Lowrie  and  Vigne  was  embarrassment.  Here  she 
always  condemned  herself  as  an  indifferent,  per 
haps  unnatural,  mother.  She  couldn't  help  it. 
In  the  same  sense  she  must  be  an  unsatisfactory 
wife.  Linda  was  unable  to  shake  off  the  con- 
[173] 


LINDA   CONDON 

viction  that  it  was  like  a  play  in  which  she  had 
no  more  than  a  spectator's  part. 

This  was  her  old  disability,  the  result  of  her 
habit  of  sitting,  as  a  child,  apart  from  the  con 
cerns  and  stir  of  living.  She  made  every  possible 
effort  to  overcome  it,  to  surrender  to  her  new  con 
ditions;  but,  if  nothing  else,  an  instinctive  shy 
ness  prevented.  It  went  back  further,  even,  she 
thought,  than  her  own  experience,  and  she  re 
called  all  she  had  heard  and  reconstructed  of  her 
father — a  man  shut  in  on  himself  who  had,  one 
day,  without  a  word  walked  out  of  the  door  and 
left  his  wife,  never  to  return.  These  realizations, 
however,  did  little  to  clarify  her  vision;  she  was 
continually  trying  to  adjust  her  being  to  circum 
stances  that  persistently  remained  a  little  distant 
and  blurred. 

In  appearance,  anyhow,  Linda  told  herself 
with  a  measure  of  reassurance,  she  was  practi 
cally  unchanged.  She  still,  with  the  support  of 
Arnaud,  disregarding  current  fashion,  wore  her 
hair  in  a  straight  bang  across  her  brow  and  blue 
gaze.  She  was  as  slender  as  formerly,  but  more 
gracefully  round,  in  spite  of  the  faint  character 
istic  stiffness  that  was  the  result  of  her  mental 
hesitation.  Her  clothes,  too,  had  hardly  varied — 
[174] 


LINDA   CONDON 

she  wore,  whenever  possible,  white  lawns  ruffled 
about  the  throat  and  hem,  with  broad  soft  black 
sashes,  while  her  more  formal  dresses  were  sheaths 
of  dull  unornamented  satin  extravagant  in  the 
perfection  of  their  simplicity. 


[175] 


XXIV 

ARNAUD  HALLET  stirred,  sharply 
closing  his  book.  He  had  changed — 
except  for  a  palpable  settling  down  of 
grayness — as  little  as  Linda.  For  a  while  she 
had  tried  to  bring  about  an  improvement  in  his 
appearance,  and  he  had  met  her  expressed  wish 
whenever  he  remembered  it;  but  this  was  not 
often.  In  the  morning  a  servant  polished  his 
shoes,  brushed  and  ironed  his  suits;  yet  by  eve 
ning,  somehow,  he  managed  to  look  as  though  he 
hadn't  been  attended  to  for  days.  She  would 
have  liked  him  to  change  for  dinner;  other  men 
of  his  connection  did,  it  was  a  part  of  his  inher 
itance.  Arnaud,  however,  in  his  slight  scoffing 
disparagement,  declined  individually  to  annoy 
himself.  He  was,  she  learned,  enormously  ab 
sorbed  in  his  historical  studies  and  papers. 

"Did  you  enjoy  it?"  she  asked  politely  of  his 
reading.     "Extremely,"  he  replied.     "The  Amer 
ican   Impressions   of  Tyrone  Power,   the   Eng 
lish  actor,  through  eighteen  thirty-three  and  four. 
[176] 


LINDA   CONDON 

His  account  of  a  European  packet  with  its  hand 
bells  and  Saratoga  water  and  breakfast  of  spitch- 
cock  is  inimitable.  I'd  like  to  have  sat  at  Cato's 
then,  with  a  julep  or  hail-storm,  and  watched  the 
trotting  races." 

Elouise  Lowrie  rose  unsteadily,  confused  with 
dozing;  but  almost  immediately  she  gathered  her 
self  into  a  relentless  propriety  and  a  formal  good 
night. 

"What  has  been  running  through  that  mys 
terious  mind  of  yours?" 

"I  had  a  letter  from  Dodge,"  she  told  him 
simply;  "and  I  was  thinking  a  little  about  the 
past."  He  exhibited  the  nice  unstrained  interest 
of  his  admirable  personality.  "Is  he  still  in 
France?"  he  queried.  "Pleydon  should  be  a 
strong  man;  I  am  sure  we  are  both  conscious  of 
a  little  disappointment  in  him."  She  said:  "I'll 
read  you  his  letter,  it's  on  the  table. 

"  'You  will  see,  my  dear  Linda,  that  I  have  not  moved 
from  the  Rue  de  Penthievre,  although  I  have  given  up  the 
place  at  Etretat,  and  I  am  not  going  to  renew  the  lease 
here.  Rodin  insists,  and  I  coming  to  agree  with  him, 
that  I  ought  to  be  in  America.  But  the  serious  attitude 
here  toward  art,  how  impossible  that  word  has  been  made, 
is  charming.  And  you  will  be  glad  to  know  that  I  have 
[177] 


LINDA    CONDON 

had  some  success  in  the  French  good  opinion.  A  marble, 
Cotton  Mather,  that  I  cut  from  the  stone,  has  been  bought 
for  the  Luxembourg. 

"  'I  can  hear  you  both  exclaim  at  the  subject,  but  it  is 
very  representative  of  me  now.  I  am  tired  of  mythological 
naiads  in  a  constant  state  of  pursuit.  Get  Hallet  to  tell 
you  something  about  Mather.  What  a  somber  flame!  I 
have  a  part  Puritan  ancestry,  as  any  Lowrie  will  inform 
you.  Well,  I  shall  be  back  in  a  few  months,  very  serious, 
and  a  politician — a  sculptor  has  to  be  that  if  he  means  to 
land  any  public  monuments  in  America. 

"  'I  hope  to  see  you.'  " 

The  letter  ended  abruptly,  with  the  signature, 
"Pleydon." 

"Are  you  happy,  Linda?"  Arnaud  Hallet  asked 
unexpectedly  after  a  short  silence.  So  abruptly 
interrogated  she  was  unable  to  respond.  "What 
I  mean  is,"  he  explained,  "do  you  think  you 
would  have  been  happier  married  to  him?  I 
knew,  certainly,  that  it  was  the  closest  possible 
thing  between  us."  Now,  however,  she  was  able 
to  satisfy  him: 

"I  couldn't  marry  Dodge." 

"Is  it  possible  to  tell  me  why?" 

"He  hurt  me  very  much  once.     I  tried  to  marry 
him,  I  tried  to  forget  it,  but  it  was  useless.     I  was 
dreadfully  unhappy,  in  a  great  many  ways — " 
[178] 


LINDA   CONDON 

"So  you  sent  for  me,"  he  put  in  as  she  paused 
reflectively.  "I  didn't  hurt  you,  at  any  rate." 
It  seemed  to  her  that  his  tone  was  shadowed. 
"You  have  never  hurt  me,  Arnaud,"  she  assured 
him,  conscious  of  the  inadequacy  of  her  words. 
"You  were  everything  I  wanted." 

"Except  for  my  hats,"  he  said  in  a  brief  flash 
of  his  saving  humor.  "It  would  be  better  for 
me,  perhaps,  if  I  could  hurt  you.  That  ability 
comes  dangerously  close  to  a  constant  of  love. 
You  mustn't  think  I  am  complaining.  I  haven't 
the  slightest  reason  in  the  face  of  your  devastating 
honesty.  I  didn't  distress  you  and  I  had  the 
necessary  minimum — the  fifty  thousand."  His 
manner  was  so  even,  so  devoid  of  sting,  that  she 
could  smile  at  the  expression  of  her  material  am 
bitions.  "I  realize  exactly  your  feeling  for  my 
self,  but  what  puzzles  me  is  your  attitude  toward 
the  children." 

"I  don't  understand  it  either,"  she  admitted, 
"except  that  I  am  quite  afraid  of  them.  They 
are  so  different  from  all  my  own  childhood;  often 
they  are  too  much  for  me.  Then  I  dread  the  time 
when  they  will  discover  how  stupid  and  unedu 
cated  I  am  at  bottom.  I'm  sure  you  already 
ask  questions  before  them  to  amuse  yourself  at 
[179] 


LINDA   CONDON 

my  doubt.  What  shall  I  do,  Arnaud,  when  they 
are  really  at  school  and  bring  home  their  books?" 

"Retreat  behind  your  dignity  as  a  parent/'  he 
advised.  "They  are  certain  to  display  their 
knowledge  and  ask  you  to  bound  things  or  name 
the  capital  of  Louisiana."  She  cried,  "Oh,  but 
I  know  that,  it's  New  Orleans!"  She  saw  at 
once,  from  his  entertained  expression,  that  she 
was  wrong  again,  and  became  conscious  of  a  faint 
flush  of  annoyance.  "It  will  be  even  worse," 
she  continued,  "when  Vigne  looks  to  me  for  ad 
vice;  I  mean  when  she  is  older  and  has  lovers." 

"She  won't  seriously;  they  never  do.  She'll 
tell  you  when  it's  all  over.  Lowrie  will  depend 
more  on  you.  I  may  have  my  fun  about  the 
capital  of  Louisiana,  Linda,  but  I  have  the  great 
est  confidence  in  your  wisdom.  God  knows  what 
an  unhappy  experience  your  childhood  was,  but 
it  has  given  you  a  superb  worldly  balance." 

"I  suppose  you're  saying  that  I  am  cold,"  she 
told  him.  "It  must  be  true,  because  it  is  repeated 
by  every  one.  Yet,  at  times,  I  used  to  be  very 
different — you'd  never  imagine  what  a  romantic 
thrill  or  strange  ideas  were  inside  of  me.  Like 
a  memory  of  a  deep  woods,  and — and  the  love 
liest  adventure.  Often  I  would  hear  music  as 
[180] 


LINDA   CONDON 

clearly  as  possible,  and  it  made  me  want  I  don't 
know  what  terrifically." 

"An  early  experience, "  he  replied.  Suddenly 
she  saw  that  he  was  tired,  his  face  was  lined  and 
dejected.  "You  read  too  much,"  Linda  declared. 
He  said:  "But  only  out  of  the  printed  book." 
She  wondered  vainly  what  he  meant.  As  he 
stood  before  the  glimmering  coals,  in  the  room 
saturated  in  repose,  she  wished  that  she  might 
give  him  more;  she  wanted  to  spend  herself  in  a 
riot  of  feeling  on  Arnaud  and  their  children. 
What  a  detestable  character  she  had!  Her  de 
sire,  her  efforts,  were  wasted. 

He  went  about  putting  up  the  windows  and 
closing  the  outside  shutters,  a  confirmed  habit. 
Linda  rose  with  her  invariable  sense  of  separa 
tion,  the  feeling  that,  bound  on  a  journey  with  a 
hidden  destination,  she  was  only  temporarily  in  a 
place  of  little  importance.  It  was  like  being  al 
ways  in  her  hat  and  jacket.  Arnaud  shook  down 
the  grate;  then  he  gazed  over  the  room;  it  was  all, 
she  was  sure,  as  it  had  been  a  century  ago,  as  it 
should  be — all  except  herself. 


[181] 


XXV 

"V  "J^ET  her  marriage  had  realized  in  almost 
^y  every  particular  what  she  had — so  much 
JL  younger — planned.  The  early  sugges 
tion,  becoming  through  constant  reiteration  a  part 
of  her  knowledge,  had  been  followed  and  accom 
plished;  and,  as  well,  her  later  needs  were  served. 
Linda  told  herself  that,  in  a  world  where  a  very 
great  deal  was  muddled,  she  had  been  unusually 
fortunate.  And  this  made  her  angry  at  her  per 
vading  lack  of  interest  in  whatever  she  had  ob 
tained. 

Other  women,  she  observed,  obviously  less 
fortunate  than  she,  were  volubly  and  warmly  ab 
sorbed  in  any  number  of  engagements  and  pleas 
ures;  she  continually  heard  them,  Arnaud's  con 
nections — the  whole  superior  society,  eternally 
and  vigorously  discussing  servants  and  bridge, 
family  and  cotillions,  indiscretions  and  chari 
ties.  These  seemed  enough  for  them;  their 
lives  were  filled,  satisfied,  extraordinarily  busy. 
Linda,  for  the  most  part,  had  but  little  to  do. 
[182] 


LINDA   CONDON 

Her  servants,  managed  with  remote  exactness, 
gave  no  trouble;  she  had  an  excellent  woman  for 
the  children;  her  dress  presented  no  new  points 
of  anxiety  nor  departure  .  .  .  she  was,  in  short, 
Arnaud  admitted,  perfectly  efficient.  She  dis 
posed  of  such  details  mechanically,  almost  im 
patiently,  and  was  contemptuous,  no  envious,  of 
the  women  whose  demands  they  contented. 

At  the  dinners,  the  balls,  to  which  Arnaud's 
sense  of  obligation  both  to  family  and  her  took 
them  against  his  inclination,  it  was  the  same — 
everyone,  it  appeared  to  Linda,  was  flushed  with 
an  intentness  she  could  not  share.  Men,  she 
found,  some  of  them  extremely  pleasant,  still 
made  adroit  and  reassuring  efforts  for  her  favor; 
the  air  here,  she  discovered,  was  even  freer  than 
the  bravado  of  her  earlier  surroundings.  This 
love-making  didn't  disturb  her — it  was,  ulti 
mately,  the  men  who  were  fretted — indeed,  she 
had  rather  hoped  that  it  would  bring  her  the  re 
lief  she  lacked. 

But  again  the  observations  and  speculation  of 
her  mature  childhood,  what  she  had  heard  re 
vealed  in  the  most  skillful  feminine  dissections, 
had  cleared  her  understanding  to  a  point  that 
made  the  advances  of  hopeful  men  quite  enter- 
[183] 


LINDA   CONDON 

tainingly  obvious.  Their  method  was  appall 
ingly  similar  and  monotonous.  She  liked,  rather 
than  not,  the  younger  ones,  whose  confidence  that 
their  passion  was  something  new  on  earth  at 
times  refreshed  her;  but  the  navigated  material 
ism  of  greater  experience  finally  became  distaste 
ful.  She  discussed  this  sharply  with  Arnaud: 

"You  simply  can't  help  believing  that  most 
women  are  complete  idiots." 

"You  haven't  said  much  more  for  men." 

"The  whole  thing  is  too  silly!  Why  is  it, 
Arnaud?  It  ought  to  be  impressive  and  sweep 
you  off  your  feet,  up — " 

"Instead  of  merely  behind  some  rented  palms," 
he  added.  "But  I  must  say,  Linda,  that  you  are 
not  a  very  highly  qualified  judge  of  sentiment." 
He  pronounced  this  equably,  but  she  was  con 
scious  of  the  presence  of  an  injury  in  his  voice. 
She  was  a  little  weary  at  being  eternally  con 
demned  for  what  she  couldn't  help.  Any  failure 
was  as  much  Arnaud  Hallet's  as  hers;  he  had  had 
his  opportunity,  all  that  for  which  he  had  im 
plored  her.  Her  thoughts  returned  to  Dodge 
Pleydon.  April  was  well  advanced,  and  he  had 
written  that  he'd  be  back  and  see  them  in  the 
spring.  Linda  listened  to  her  heart  but  it  was 
[184] 


LINDA   CONDON 

unhastened  by  a  beat.  She  would  be  very  glad  to 
have  him  at  hand,  in  her  life  again,  of  course. 

Then  the  direction  of  her  mind  veered — what 
did  he  still  think  of  her?  Probably  he  had  al 
together  recovered  from  his  love  for  her.  It  had 
been  a  warm  day,  and  Arnaud  had  opened  a 
window;  but  now  she  was  aware  of  a  cold  air  on 
her  shoulder  and  she  asked  him  abruptly  to  lower 
the  sash.  Linda  remembered,  with  a  lingering 
sense  of  triumph,  the  Susanna  Noda  whom 
Dodge  had  left  at  a  party  for  her.  There  had 
been  a  great  many  Susannas  in  his  life;  the  rea 
son  for  this  was  the  absence  of  any  overwhelming 
single  influence.  It  might  be  that  now — he  had 
written  of  the  change  in  the  subjects  of  his  work 
— such  a  guide  had  come  into  his  existence.  She 
hoped  she  had.  Yet,  in  view  of  the  announced 
silliness  of  women,  she  didn't  want  him  to  be 
cheaply  deluded. 

He  was  an  extremely  human  man. 

But  she,  Linda,  it  seemed,  was  an  inhuman 
woman.  The  days  ran  into  weeks  that  added 
another  month  to  spring;  a  June  advanced  sultry 
with  heat;  and,  suddenly  as  usual,  a  maid  at  the 
door  of  her  room  announced  Pleydon.  It  was 
five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  she  had  to  dress, 
[185] 


LINDA   CONDON 

and  she  sent  him  a  message  that  he  mustn't  ex 
pect  her  in  a  hurry.  She  paused  in  her  deliber 
ate  preparations  for  a  long  thoughtful  gaze  into 
a  mirror;  there  was  not  yet  a  shadow  on  her  face, 
the  trace  of  a  line  at  her  eyes.  The  sharp  smooth 
turning  and  absolute  whiteness  of  her  bare  shoul 
ders  were  flawless. 

At  first  it  appeared  to  Linda  that  he,  too,  had 
not  changed.  They  were  in  the  library  opening 
into  the  dining-room,  a  space  shut  against  the 
sun  by  the  Venetian  blinds,  and  faintly  scented 
by  a  bowl  of  early  tea  roses.  He  appeared 
the  same — large  and  informally  clad  in  gray 
flannels,  with  aggressive  features  and  sensi 
tive  strong  hands.  He  was  quiet  but  plainly 
happy  to  be  with  her  again  and  sat  leaning  for 
ward  on  his  knees,  watching  her  intently  as  she 
chose  a  seat. 

Then  it  slowly  dawned  on  her  that  he  had 
changed,  yes — tragically.  Pleydon,  in  every 
way,  was  years  older.  His  voice,  less  arbitrary, 
had  new  depths  of  questioning,  his  mouth  was 
more  repressed,  his  face  notably  sparer  of  flesh. 
He  was  immediately  aware  of  the  result  of  her 
scrutiny.  "I  have  been  working  like  a  fool," 
he  explained.  "A  breath  of  sickness,  too,  four 
[186] 


LINDA   CONDON 

years  ago  in  Soochow.  One  of  the  damnable 
Asiatic  fevers  that  a  European  is  supposed  to  be 
immune  from.  You  are  a  miracle,  Linda.  How 
long  has  it  been — nearly  eight  years;  you  have 
two  children  and  Arnaud  Hallet  and  yet  you  are 
the  girl  I  met  at  Markue's.  I  wanted  to  see  you 
different,  just  a  little,  a  trace  of  something  that 
should  have  happened  to  you.  It  hasn't. 
You're  the  most  remarkable  mother  alive." 

"If  I  am/'  she  returned,  "it  is  not  as  a  success, 
or  at  least  for  me.  Lowrie  and  Vigne  are 
healthy,  and  happy  enough;  but  I  can't  lose  my 
self  in  them,  Dodge;  I  can't  lose  myself  at  all." 

He  was  quiet  at  this,  the  smoke  of  his 
cigarette  climbing  bluely  in  a  space  with  the 
aqueous  stillness  of  a  lake's  depths.  "The 
same,"  he  went  on  after  a  long  pause;  "nothing 
has  touched  you.  I  ought  to  be  relieved  but, 
do  you  know,  it  frightens  me.  You  are  relent 
less.  You  have  no  right,  at  the  same  time,  to  be 
beautiful.  I  have  seen  a  great  many  celebrated 
women  at  their  best  moments,  but  you  are  lovelier 
than  any.  It  isn't  a  simple  affair  of  proportion 
and  features — I  wish  I  could  hold  it  in  a  phrase, 
the  turn  of  a  chisel.  I  can't.  It's  deathless 
romance  in  a  bang  cut  blackly  across  heavenly 
[187] 


LINDA   CONDON 

blue."  He  was  silent  again,  and  Linda  glad 
that  he  still  found  her  attractive.  She  discov 
ered  that  the  misery  his  presence  once  caused  her 
had  entirely  vanished,  its  place  taken  by  an  eager 
interest  in  his  affairs,  a  lightness  of  spirit  at  the 
realization  that,  while  his  love  for  her  might  have 
grown  calm,  no  other  woman  possessed  it. 


[188] 


XXVI 

AT  the  dinner-table  she  listened — cool 
and  fresh,  Arnaud  complained,  in  spite 
of  the  heat — to  the  talk  of  the  two  men. 
By  her  side  Elouise  Lowrie  occasionally  repeated, 
in  a  voice  like  the  faint  jangle  of  an  old  thin 
piano,  the  facts  of  a  family  connection  or  a  com 
mendation  of  the  Dodges.  Arnaud  really  knew 
a  surprising  lot,  and  his  conversation  with  Pley- 
don  was  strung  with  terms  completely  unintel 
ligible  to  her.  It  developed,  finally,  into  an 
argument  over  the  treatment  of  the  acanthus  mo 
tive  in  rococo  ornament.  France  was  summoned 
against  Spain;  the  architectural  degrading  of 
Italy  deplored.  ...  It  amazed  her  that  any  one 
could  remember  so  much. 

Linda  without  a  conscious  reason  suddenly 
stopped  the  investigation  of  her  feeling  for  Pley- 
don.  Even  in  the  privacy  of  her  thoughts 
an  added  obscurity  kept  her  from  the  customary 
clear  reasoning.  After  dinner,  out  in  the  close 
gloom  of  the  garden,  she  watched  the  flicker  of 
the  cigarettes.  There  was  thunder,  so  distant 
[189] 


LINDA   CONDON 

and  vague  that  for  a  long  while  Linda  thought 
she  was  deceived.  She  had  a  keen  rushing  sen 
sation  of  the  strangeness  of  her  situation  here — 
Linda  Hallet.  The  night  was  like  a  dream  from 
which  she  would  stir,  sigh,  to  find  herself  back 
again  in  the  past  waiting  for  the  return  of  her 
mother  from  one  of  her  late  parties. 

But  it  was  Arnaud  who  moved  and,  accom 
panying  Elouise  Lowrie,  went  into  the  house  for 
his  interminable  reading.  Pleydon's  voice  be 
gan  in  a  low  remembering  tone: 

"What  a  fantastic  place  the  Feldt  apartment 
was,  with  that  smothered  room  where  you  said 
you  would  marry  me.  You  must  have  got  hold 
of  Hallet  in  the  devil  of  a  hurry.  I've  often 
tried  to  understand  what  happened;  why,  all  the 
time,  you  were  upset — why,  why,  why?" 

"In  a  way  it  was  because  a  ridiculous  hair 
dresser  burned  out  some  of  my  mother's  front 
wave,"  she  explained. 

"Of  course,"  he  replied  derisively,  "nothing 
could  be  plainer." 

She  agreed  calmly.     "It  was  very  plain.     If 
you  want  me  to  try  to  tell  you  don't  interrupt.     It 
isn't  a  happy  memory,  and  I  am  only  doing  it 
because  I  was  so  rotten  to  you. 
[190] 


LINDA   CONDON 

"Yes,  I  can  see  now  that  it  was  the  hairdresser 
and  a  hundred  other  things  exactly  the  same. 
My  mother,  all  the  women  we  knew,  did  nothing 
but  lace  and  paint  and  frizzle  for  men.  I  used 
to  think  it  was  a  game  they  played  and  wonder 
where  the  fun  was.  There  were  even  hints  about 
that  and  later  they  particularized  and  it  made 
me  as  sick  as  possible.  The  men,  too,  were 
odious;  mostly  fat  and  bald;  and  after  a  while, 
when  they  pinched  or  kissed  me,  I  wanted  to  die. 

"That  was  all  I  knew  about  love,  I  had  never 
heard  of  any  other — men  away  from  their  fam 
ilies  for  what  they  called  a  good  time  and  women 
plotting  and  planning  to  give  it  to  them  or  not 
give  it  to  them.  Then  mother,  after  her  looks 
were  spoiled,  married  Mr.  Moses  Feldt,  and  I 
met  Judith,  who  only  existed  for  men  and  men's 
rooms  and  told  me  worse  things,  I'm  sure,  than 
mother  ever  dreamed;  and,  on  top  of  that,  I  met 
you  and  you  kissed  me. 

"But  it  was  different  from  any  other;  it  didn't 
shock  me,  and  it  brought  back  a  thrill  I  have 
always  had.  I  wanted,  then,  to  love  you,  and 
have  you  ask  me  to  marry  you,  more  than  any 
thing  else  in  the  world.  I  was  sure,  if  you  would 
only  be  patient,  that  I  could  change  what  had 
[191] 


LINDA   CONDON 

hurt  me  into  a  beautiful  feeling.  I  couldn't  tell 
you  because  I  didn't  understand  myself."  She 
stopped,  and  Pleydon  repeated,  bitterly  and 
slow: 

"Fat  old  bald  men;  and  I  was  one  with  them 
destroying  your  exquisite  hope."  She  heard  the 
creak  of  the  basket  chair  as  he  leaned  forward, 
his  face  masked  in  darkness.  "Perhaps  you 
think  I  haven't  paid. 

"You  will  never  know  what  love  is  unless  I 
can  manage  somehow  to  make  you  understand 
how  much  I  love  you.  Hallet  will  have  to  en 
dure  your  hearing  it.  This  doesn't  belong  to 
him;  it  has  not  touched  the  earth.  Every  one, 
more  or  less,  talks  about  love;  but  not  one  in  a 
thousand,  not  one  in  a  million,  has  such  an  ex 
perience.  If  they  did  it  would  tear  the  world 
into  shreds.  It  would  tear  them  as  it  has  me. 
I  realize  the  other,  the  common  thing — who  ex 
perimented  more!  This  has  nothing  to  do  with 
it.  A  boy  lost  in  the  idealism  of  his  first  wor 
ship  has  a  faint  reflection.  Listen: 

"I  can  always,  with  a  wish,  see  you  standing 

before   me.     You   yourself — the   folds   of   your 

sash,  the  sharp  narrow  print  of  your  slippers  on 

the  pavement  or  the  matting  or  the  rug,  the  ruffles 

[192] 


LINDA    CONDON 

about  your  hands.  I  have  the  feeling  of  you 
near  me  with  your  breathing  disturbing  the 
delicacy  of  your  breast.  There  is  the  odor  and 
shimmer  of  your  hair  .  .  .  your  lips  move  .  .  . 
but  without  a  sound. 

"This  vision  is  more  real  than  reality,  than 
an  opera-house  full  of  people  or  the  Place  Ven- 
dome;  and  it,  you,  is  all  I  care  for,  all  I  think 
about,  all  I  want.  I  find  quiet  places  and  stay 
there  for  hours,  with  you;  or,  if  that  isn't  pos 
sible,  I  turn  into  a  blind  man,  a  dead  man  warm 
again  at  the  bare  thought  of  your  face.  Listen: 

"I've  been  in  shining  heaven  with  you.  I  have 
been  melted  to  nothing  and  made  over  again,  in 
you,  good.  We  have  been  walking  together  in  a 
new  world  with  rapture  instead  of  air  to  breathe. 
A  slow  walk  through  dark  trees — God  knows 
why — like  pines.  And  every  time  I  think  of 
you  it  is  exactly  as  though  I  could  never  die,  as 
though  you  had  burned  all  the  corruption  out 
of  me  and  I  was  made  of  silver  fire.  And  listen : 

"Nothing  else  is  of  any  importance,  now  or 
afterward,  you  are  now  and  the  hereafter.  I  see 
people  and  people  and  hear  words  and  words, 
and  I  forget  them  the  moment  they  have  gone,  the 
second  they  are  still.  But  I  haven't  lost  an  in- 
[193] 


LINDA   CONDON 

flection  of  your  voice.  When  I  work  in  clay  or 
stone  I  model  and  cut  you  into  every  surface  and 
fold.  I  see  you  looking  back  at  me  out  of  marble 
and  bronze.  And  here,  in  this  garden,  you  tried 
to  give  me  more — " 

The  infinitely  removed  thunder  was  like  the 
continued  echo  of  his  voice.  There  was  a  stir 
ring  of  the  leaves  above  her  head ;  and  the  light 
that  had  shone  against  the  house  in  Elouise  Low- 
rie's  window  was  suddenly  extinguished.  All 
that  she  felt  was  weariness  and  a  confused  de 
jection,  the  weight  of  an  insuperable  disappoint 
ment.  She  could  say  nothing.  Words,  even 
Pleydon's,  seemed  to  her  vain.  The  solid  fact  of 
Arnaud,  of  what  Dodge,  more  than  seven  years 
before,  had  robbed  her,  put  everything  else  aside, 
crushed  it. 

She  realized  that  she  would  never  get  from  life 
what  supremely  repaid  the  suffering  of  other 
women,  made  up  for  them  the  failure  of  prac 
tically  every  vision.  She  was  sorry  for  herself, 
yes,  and  for  Dodge  Pleydon.  Yet  he  had  his 
figures  in  metal  and  stone;  his  sense  of  the  im 
portance  of  his  work  had  increased  enormously; 
and,  well,  there  were  Lowrie  and  Vigne;  it  would 
be  difficult,  every  one  agreed,  to  find  better  or 
[194] 


LINDA   CONDON 

handsomer  children.  But  they  seemed  no  more 
than  shadows  or  colored  mist.  This  terrified  her 
— what  a  hopelessly  deficient  woman  she  must  be ! 
But  even  in  the  profundity  of  her  depression  the 
old  vibration  of  nameless  joy  reached  her  heart. 


[195] 


XXVII 

IN  the  morning  there  was  a  telegram  from 
Judith  Feldt,  saying  that  her  mother  was 
dangerously  sick,  and  she  had  lunch  on  the 
train  for  New  York.  The  apartment  seemed 
stuffy;  there  was  a  trace  of  dinginess,  neglect, 
about  the  black  velvet  rugs  and  hangings.  Her 
mother,  she  found,  had  pneumonia;  there  was 
practically  no  chance  of  her  recovering.  Linda 
sat  for  a  short  while  by  the  elder's  bed,  intent 
upon  a  totally  strange  woman,  darkly  flushed 
and  ravished  in  an  agonizing  difficulty  of  breath 
ing.  Linda  had  a  remembered  vision  of  her 
gold-haired  and  gay  in  floating  chiffons,  and  sud 
denly  life  seemed  shockingly  brief.  A  serious- 
visaged  clergyman  entered  the  room  as  she  left 
and  she  heard  the  rich  soothing  murmur  of  a 
confident  phrase. 

The   Stella    Condon   who   had   become   Mrs. 

Moses  Feldt  had  had  little  time  for  the  support 

of  the  church;  although  Linda  recalled  that  she 

had  uniformly  spoken  well  of  its  offices.     To 

[196] 


LINDA   CONDON 

condemn  Christianity,  she  had  asserted,  was  to 
invite  bad  luck.  She  treated  this  in  exactly  the 
way  she  regarded  walking  under  ladders  or 
spilling  salt  or  putting  on  a  stocking  wrong. 
Linda,  however,  had  disregarded  these  possibili 
ties  of  disaster  and,  with  them,  religion. 

A  great  many  people,  she  noticed,  talked  at 
length  about  it;  women  in  their  best  wraps 
and  with  expensive  little  prayer  books  left  the 
hotels  for  various  Sunday  morning  services,  and 
ministers  came  in  later  for  tea.  All  this,  she 
understood,  was  in  preparation  for  heaven,  where 
everybody,  who  was  not  in  hell,  was  to  be  for 
ever  the  same  and  yet  radiantly  different.  It 
seemed  very  vague  and  far  away  to  Linda,  and, 
since  there  was  such  a  number  of  immediate 
problems  for  her  to  consider,  she  had  easily 
ignored  the  future.  When  now,  with  her  mother 
dying,  it  was  thrust  most  uncomfortably  before 
her. 

She  half  remembered  sentences,  admonitions, 
of  the  godly — a  woman  had  once  told  her  that 
dancing  and  low  gowns  were  hateful  in  the  sight 
of  God,  some  one  else  that  playing-cards  were  an 
instrument  of  the  devil.  Pleasure,  she  had  gath 
ered,  was  considered  wrong,  and  she  instinctively 
[197] 


LINDA   CONDON 

put  these  opinions,  together  with  a  great  deal  else, 
aside  as  envious. 

That  expressed  her  whole  experience.  She  had 
never  keenly  associated  the  thought  of  death  with 
herself  before,  and  she  was  unutterably  revolted 
by  the  impending  destruction  of  her  fine  body, 
the  delicate  care  of  which  formed  her  main  pre 
occupation  in  life.  Age  was  supremely  distaste 
ful,  but  this  other  .  .  .  she  shuddered. 

Linda  wanted  desperately  to  preserve  the 
whiteness  of  her  skin,  the  flexible  black  distinc 
tion  of  her  hair,  yes — her  beauty.  Here,  again, 
with  other  women  the  vicarious  immortality  of 
children  would  be  sufficient.  But  not  for  her. 
She  was  in  the  room  that  had  been  hers  before 
marriage,  with  her  infinite  preparations  for  the 
night  at  an  end;  and,  her  hair  loose  across  the 
blanched  severity  of  her  attire,  her  delicately  full 
arms  bare,  she  clasped  her  cold  hands  in  stabbing 
apprehension. 

She  would  do  anything,  anything,  to  escape 
that  repulsive  fatality  to  her  lavished  care.  It 
was  only  to  be  accomplished  by  being  good;  and 
goodness  was  in  the  charge  of  the  minister.  She 
saw  clearly  and  at  once  her  difficulty — how  could 
[198] 


LINDA   CONDON 

she  go  to  a  solemn  man  in  a  clerical  vest  and  ad 
mit  that  she  was  solely  concerned  by  the  impend 
ing  loss  of  her  beauty.  The  promised  splendor  of 
heaven,  in  itself,  failed  to  move  her — it  threatened 
to  be  monotonous ;  and  she  was  honest  in  her  rec 
ognition  that  charity,  the  ugliness  of  poverty,  re 
pelled  her.  Linda  was  certain  that  she  could 
never  change  in  these  particulars;  she  could  only 
pretend. 

A  surprising  multiplication  of  such  pretense 
occurred  to  her  in  people  regarded  as  impres 
sively  religious.  She  had  seen  men  like  that — 
she  vaguely  thought  of  the  name  Jasper — going 
off  with  her  mother  in  cabs  to  dinners  that  must 
have  been  "godless."  She  wondered  if  this  mere 
attitude,  the  public  show,  were  enough.  And  an 
instinctive  response  told  her  that  it  was  not.  If 
all  she  had  been  informed  about  the  future  were 
true  she  decided  that  her  mother's  chance  was  no 
worse  than  that  of  any  false  display  of  virtue. 

She,  Linda,  could  do  nothing. 

The  funeral  ceremony  with  its  set  form — so 

inappropriate    to    her    mother's    qualities — was 

even  more  remote  from  Linda's  sympathies  than 

was  common  in  her  encounters.     But  Mr.  Moses 

[199] 


LINDA    CONDON 

Feldt's  grief  appeared  to  her  actual  and  affecting. 
He  invested  every  one  with  the  purity  of  his  own 
spirit. 

She  left  New  York  at  the  first  possible  mo 
ment  with  the  feeling  that  she  was  definitely 
older.  The  realization,  she  discovered,  hap 
pened  in  that  way — ordinarily  giving  the  flight 
of  time  no  consideration  it  was  brought  back  to 
her  at  intervals  of  varying  length.  As  she  aged 
they  would  grow  shorter. 

The  result  of  this  experience  was  an  added 
sense  of  failure;  she  tried  more  than  ever  to 
overcome  her  indifference,  get  a  greater  hap 
piness  from  her  surroundings  and  activity. 
Linda  cultivated  an  attention  to  Lowrie  and 
Vigne.  They  responded  charmingly  but  her  shy 
ness  with  them  persisted  in  the  face  of  her  inalien 
able  right  to  their  full  possession.  She  insisted, 
too,  on  going  about  vigorously  in  spite  of 
Arnaud's  humorous  groans  and  protests.  She 
forced  herself  to  talk  more  to  the  men  attracted 
to  her,  and  assumed,  with  disconcerting  ease,  an 
air  of  sympathetic  interest.  But,  unfortunately, 
this  brought  on  her  a  rapid  increase  of  the  love- 
making  that  she  found  so  fatiguing. 

She  studied  her  husband  thoughtfully  through 
[200] 


LINDA    CONDON 

the  evenings  at  home,  before  the  Franklin  stove, 
or,  in  summer,  in  the  secluded  garden.  Abso 
lutely  nothing  was  wrong  with  him ;  he  had,  after 
several  deaths,  inherited  even  more  money;  and, 
in  his  deprecating  manner  where  it  was  con 
cerned,  devoted  it  to  her  wishes.  Except  for 
books,  and  the  clothes  she  was  forced  to  remind 
him  to  get,  he  had  no  personal  expenses.  In  ad 
dition  to  the  money  he  never  offended  her,  his 
relationships  and  manner  were  conducted  with 
an  inborn  nice  formality  that  preserved  her  high 
est  self-opinion. 

Yet^she  was  never  able  to  escape  from  the  limi 
tations  of  a  calm  admiration;  she  couldn't  lose 
herself,  disregard  herself  in  a  flood  of  generous 
emotion.  When,  desperately,  she  tried,  he,  too, 
was  perceptibly  ill  at  ease.  Usually  he  was  un 
disturbed,  but  once,  when  she  stood  beside  him 
with  her  coffee  cup  at  dinner,  he  disastrously  lost 
his  equanimity.  Tensely  putting  the  cup  away 
he  caught  her  with  straining  hands. 

"Oh,  Linda,"  he  cried,  "is  it  true  that  you  love 
me!  Do  you  really  belong  to  us — to  Vigne  and 
Lowrie  and  me?  I  can't  stand  it  if  you  won't 
.  .  .  some  day." 

She  backed  away  into  the  opening  of  a  win- 
[201] 


LINDA   CONDON 

dow,  against  the  night,  from  the  justice  of  his 
desire;  and  she  was  cold  with  self-detestation 
as  her  fingers  touched  the  glass.  Linda  tried  to 
speak,  to  lie;  but,  miserably  still,  she  was  unable 
to  deceive  him.  The  animation,  the  fervor  of 
his  longing,  swiftly  perished.  His  arms  dropped 
to  his  side.  An  unbearable  constraint  deepened 
with  the  silence  in  the  room,  and  later  he  lightly 
said: 

"You  mustn't  trifle  with  my  ancient  heart, 
Linda,  folly  and  age — " 


[202] 


XXVIII 

THE  only  other  quantity  in  her  life  was 
Dodge  Pleydon.  He  wrote  her  again, 
perhaps  three  months  after  the  explana 
tion  of  his  love ;  but  his  letter  was  devoted  wholly 
to  his  work,  and  so  technical  that  she  had  to  ask 
Arnaud  to  interpret  it.  He  added: 

"That  is  the  mind  of  an  impressive  man.  He 
has  developed  enormously — curious,  so  late  in 
life.  Pleydon  must  be  fully  as  old  as  myself. 
It's  clear  that  he  has  dropped  his  women.  I  saw 
a  photograph  of  the  Cotton  Mather  reproduced 
in  a  weekly,  and  it  was  as  gaunt  as  a  Puritan 
Sunday.  Brimmed  with  power.  Why  don't  we 
see  him  oftener?  Write  and  say  I'd  like  to  con 
tradict  him  again  about  the  Eastlake  period." 

He  made  no  further  reference  to  Pleydon  then, 
and  Linda  failed  to  write  as  Arnaud  suggested. 
Though  she  wasn't  disturbed  at  the  possibility 
of  a  continuation  of  his  admissions  of  love 
she  was  weary  of  the  thought  of  its  useless- 
ness.  Linda  was,  she  told  herself,  damned  by 
[203] 


LINDA   CONDON 

practicability.  Her  husband  used  the  familiar 
term  of  reproach,  material.  She  didn't  in  the 
least  want  to  be.  Circumstance,  she  had  a  feel 
ing,  had  forced  it  upon  her. 

Arnaud,  however,  who  had  met  Dodge  Pleydon 
in  Philadelphia,  brought  him  home.  Linda  saw 
with  a  strange  constriction  of  the  heart  that  Pley- 
don's  hair  was  definitely  gray.  He  had  had  a 
recurrence  of  the  fever  contracted  in  Soochow. 
The  men  at  once  entered  on  another  discussion 
which  she  was  unable  to  follow;  but  it  was  clear 
that  her  husband  now  listened  with  an  increasing 
surrender  of  opinion  to  the  sculptor.  Pleydon, 
it  was  true,  was  correspondingly  more  impatient 
with  minds  that  disagreed  with  his.  He  was  at 
once  thinner  and  bigger,  his  face  deeply  lined; 
but  his  eyes  had  a  steady  vital  intensity  difficult  to 
encounter. 

She  considered  him  in  detail  as  the  talk 
left  dinner,  the  glasses  and  candles  spent.  He 
drank,  from  a  tall  tumbler  with  a  single  piece 
of  ice,  the  special  whisky  Arnaud  kept.  He 
had  been  neglecting  himself,  too — there  were 
traces  of  clay  about  his  finger-nails,  and  he  ate 
hurriedly  and  insufficiently.  When  she  had  an 
opportunity,  Linda  decided,  she  would  speak  to 
[204] 


LINDA   CONDON 

him  about  these  necessary  trifles.  Then,  she  had 
no  chance;  and  it  was  not  until  the  following 
winter,  at  a  Thursday  afternoon  concert  during 
the  yearly  exhibition  of  the  Academy  of  Fine 
Arts,  that  she  could  gently  complain. 

It  was  gloomy,  with  a  promise  of  snow  out 
side;  and  the  great  space  of  the  stairway  to  the 
galleries  was  rilled  with  shadow  and  the  strains 
of  Armide  echoing  from  the  orchestra  playing 
at  the  railing  above  the  entrance.  Pleydon,  to 
gether  with  a  great  many  others,  had  spread  an 
overcoat  on  the  masonry  of  the  steps,  and  they 
were  seated  in  the  obscurity  of  the  balustrade. 

"You  look  as  though  you  hadn't  had  enough 
to  eat,"  she  observed.  "You  used  to  be  almost 
thick  but  now  you  are  a  thing  of  terrifying  grim- 
ness.  You  look  like  a  monk.  I  wonder  why 
you're  like  a  monk,  Dodge  ?" 

"Linda  Condon,"  he  replied. 

"That  can't  be  it  now;  I  haven't  been  Linda 
Condon  for  years,  but  Mrs.  Arnaud  Hallet.  It's 
very  pretty,  of  course,  and  I'd  like  to  think  you 
could  keep  a  young  love  alive  so  long.  Expe 
rience  makes  me  doubt  anything  of  the  sort;  but 
then  I  was  always  skeptical." 

"You  have  never  been  anyone  else,"  he  as- 
[205] 


LINDA   CONDON 

serted  positively.  "You  were  born  Linda  Con 
don  and  you'll  die  that,  except  for  some  extraor 
dinary  accident.  I  can't  imagine  what  it  would 
be — a  miracle  like  quaker-ladies  in  the  Ant 
arctic." 

"It  sounds  uncomplimentary,  and  I'm  sick  of 
being  compared  with  polar  places.  What  are 
quaker-ladies?" 

"Fragile  little  flowers  in  the  spring  meadows." 
"I'd  rather  listen  to  the  music  than  you." 
"That  is  why  loving  you  is  so  eternal,  why  it 
doesn't  fluctuate  like  a  human  emotion.     You 
can't  exhaust  it  and  rest  before  a  new  tide  sweeps 
back;  the  timeless  ecstasy  of  a  worship  of  God 
.  .  .  breeding  madness." 

She  failed  to  understand  and  turned  a  troubled 
gaze  to  his  bitter  repression.  "I  don't  like  to 
make  you  unhappy,  Dodge,"  she  said  in  a  low 
tone.  "What  can  I  do?  I  am  a  horrid  disap 
pointment  to  all  of  you,  but  most  to  myself.  I 
can't  go  over  it  again." 

"Beauty  has  nothing  to  do  with  happiness,"  he 
declared  harshly.  He  rose,  without  consulting 
her  wishes;  and  Linda  followed  him  as  he  pro 
ceeded  above,  irresistibly  drawn  to  the  bronze  he 
was  showing  in  the  Rotunda. 
[206] 


LINDA    CONDON 

It  was  the  head  and  part  of  the  shoulders  of  a 
very  old  woman,  infinitely  worn,  starved  by  want 
and  spent  in  brutal  labor.  There  was  a  thin 
wisp  of  hair  pinned  in  a  meager  knot  on  her  skull ; 
her  bones  were  mercilessly  indicated,  barely  cov 
ered  with  drum-like  skin;  her  mouth  was  stamped 
with  timid  humility;  while  her  eyes  peered  weakly 
from  their  sunken  depths. 

"Well?"  he  demanded,  interrogating  her  in  the 
interest  of  his  work. 

"I — I  suppose  it's  perfectly  done,"  she  re 
plied,  at  a  loss  for  a  satisfactory  appreciation. 
"It's  true,  certainly.  But  isn't  it  more  unpleasant 
than  necessary?"  Pleydon  smiled  patiently. 
"Beauty,"  he  said,  with  his  mobile  gesture. 
"Pity,  Katharsis — the  wringing  out  of  all  dross." 

The  helpless  feeling  of  her  overwhelming  igno 
rance  returned.  She  was  like  a  woman  held  be 
yond  the  closed  door  of  treasure.  "Come  over 
here."  He  unceremoniously  led  her  to  the  model 
ing  of  a  ruffled  grouse,  faithful  in  every  diversi 
fied  feather.  Linda  thought  it  admirable,  really 
amazing;  but  he  dismissed  it  with  a  passionate 
energy.  "The  dull  figuriste!"  he  exclaimed. 
"Daguerre.  Once  I  could  have  done  that,  yes, 
and  been  entertained  by  its  adroitness  and  in- 
[207] 


LINDA   CONDON 

science — before  you  made  me.  Do  you  suppose 
I  was  able  then  to  understand  the  sheer  tragic 
fortitude  to  live  of  a  scrubwoman!  The  head 
you  thought  unpleasant — haven't  you  seen  her 
going  home  in  the  March  slush  of  a  city?  Did 
you  notice  the  gaps  in  her  shoes,  the  ragged  shawl 
about  a  body  twisted  with  forty,  fifty,  sixty  years 
of  wet  stone  floors  and  steps?  Did  you  wonder 
what  she  had  for  supper?" 

"No,  Dodge,  I  didn't.  They  always  make  me 
wretched." 

"Well,  to  realize  all  that,  to  feel  the  degrada 
tion  of  her  nature,  to  lie,  sick  with  exhaustion,  on 
the  broken  slats  of  her  bed  under  a  ravelled- 
out  travesty  of  a  quilt,  and  get  up  morning  after 
morning  in  an  iron  winter  dark — to  experience 
that  in  your  spirit  and  put  it  into  durable  metal, 
hard  stone — is  to  hold  beauty  in  your  hands." 

Her  interest  in  his  speech  was  mingled  with 
the  knowledge  that,  in  order  to  dress  comfortably 
for  dinner,  she  must  leave  immediately.  Pleydon 
helped  her  into  the  Hallet  open  motor  landaulet. 
Linda  demanded  quantities  of  air.  He  was,  he 
told  her  at  the  door,  leaving  in  an  hour  for  New 
York.  "I  wish  you  could  be  happier,"  she  in 
sisted.  He  reminded  her  that  he  had  had  the 
[208] 


LINDA   CONDON 

afternoon  with  her.  It  was  so  little,  she  thought, 
carried  rapidly  over  a  smooth  wide  street.  His 
love  for  her  increased  rather  than  lessened.  How 
wonderful  it  was.  .  .  .  The  woman  outside  that 
barred  door  of  treasure. 


[209] 


XXIX 

LINDA  thought  frequently  about  Dodge 
and  his  feeling  for  her;  memories  of  his 
words,  his  appearance,  speculations, 
spread  through  her  tranquil  daily  affairs  like  the 
rich  subdued  pattern  of  a  fine  carpet  on  the  bare 
floor  of  her  life.  She  was  puzzled  by  the  depth 
of  a  passion  that,  apparently,  made  no  demands 
other  than  the  occasional  necessity  to  be  with  her 
and  the  knowledge  that  she  existed.  If  she  had 
been  a  very  intelligent  woman,  and,  of  course,  not 
quite  bad-looking,  she  might  have  understood 
both  Pleydon  and  Arnaud,  the  latter  a  man  whose 
mind  was  practically  absorbed  in  the  pages  of 
books.  There  could  be  no  doubt,  no  question,  of 
their  love  for  her. 

Then  there  had  always  been  the  others — the 
men  at  the  parties,  in  her  garden,  through  the  old 
days  of  her  childhood  in  hotels.  It  was  very 
stupid,  very  annoying,  but  at  the  same  time  she 
became-  interested  in  what,  with  her  candid  in 
difference,  affected  them.  She  had  never,  really, 
[210] 


LINDA    CONDON 

even  when  she  desired,  succeeded  in  giving  them 
anything,  anything  conscious  or  for  which  they 
moved.  Judith  Feldt,  on  the  contrary,  had  been 
prodigal.  And,  while  certainly  numbers  of  men 
had  been  attracted  to  her,  they  all  tired  of  her 
with  marked  rapidity.  Men  met  Judith,  Linda 
recalled,  with  eagerness,  they  came  immediately 
and  often  to  see  her  ...  for,  perhaps,  a  month. 
Then,  temporarily  deserted,  she  was  submerged 
in  depression  and  nervous  tears. 

But,  while  it  was  obviously  impossible  for  all 
lovers  to  be  constant,  two  extraordinary  and  su 
perior  men  would  be  faithful  to  her  as  long  as 
she  lived,  no — as  long  as  they  lived.  This  was 
beyond  doubt.  One  was  celebrated — she  watched 
with  a  quiet  pride  Pleydon's  fame  penetrate  the 
country — and  the  other,  her  husband,  a  person 
of  the  most  exacting  delicacy  of  habits,  intellect 
and  wit. 

What  was  it,  she  wondered,  that  made  the  su 
preme  importance  of  women  to  men  worth  con 
sideration.  Linda  was  thinking  of  this  now  in 
connection  with  her  daughter.  Vigne  was  four 
teen;  a  larger  girl  than  she  had  ever  been,  with 
her  father's  fine  abundant  cinnamon-brown  hair, 
a  shapely  sensitive  mouth,  and  a  wide  brown  gaze 
[211] 


LINDA    CONDON 

with  a  habit  of  straying,  at  inappropriate  mo 
ments,  from  things  seen  to  the  invisible.  She 
was,  Linda  realized  thankfully,  transparently 
honest;  her  only  affectation  was  the  slight  super 
cilious  manner  of  her  associations ;  and  she  read, 
ridiculously  like  her  father,  with  increasing 
pleasure. 

However,  what  engaged  Linda  most  was  the 
fact  that  Vigne  already  liked  men;  she  had  been 
at  the  fringe,  as  it  were,  of  young  dances,  with  a 
sparkling  satisfaction  to  herself  and  the  securely 
nice  youths  who  "cut  in"  at  her  brief  appear 
ances. 

The  truth  was  that  Linda  saw  that  more  than  a 
trace  of  Stella  Condon's  warm  generosity  of 
emotion  had  been  brought  by  herself  to  Arnaud's 
daughter.  The  faults  of  every  life,  every  circum 
stance,  were  endlessly  multiplied  through  all  exist 
ence.  At  fourteen,  it  was  Linda's  frowning  im 
pression,  her  mother  had  very  fully  instructed  her 
in  the  wiles  and  structure  of  admirable  marriage, 
and  she  had  never  completely  lost  some  hard 
pearls  of  the  elder's  wisdom.  Should  she,  in 
turn,  communicate  them  to  Vigne? 

The  moment,  the  anxiety,  she  dreaded  was  ar 
riving,  and  it  found  her  no  freer  of  doubt  than 
[212] 


LINDA    CONDON 

had  the  other  aspects  of  her  own  responses.  Yet 
here  she  was  possessed  by  the  keenest  need  for 
absolute  rectitude;  and  perhaps  this,  she  thought, 
with  an  unusual  pleasure,  was  an  evidence  of  the 
affection  she  had  seemed  to  lack.  But  in  the  end 
she  said  nothing. 

She  was  still  unable  to  disentangle  the  flesh 
from  the  spirit,  love — the  love  that  so  amazingly 
illuminated  Dodge  Pleydon — from  comfort. 
Dodge  had  disturbed  all  her  sense  of  values, 
even  to  the  point  of  unsettling  her  allegiance  to 
the  supremacy  of  a  great  deal  of  money.  He  had 
worked  this  without  giving  her  anything  definite, 
that  she  could  explain  to  Vigne,  in  return.  Linda 
preserved  her  demand  for  the  actual.  If  she 
could  only  comprehend  the  force  animating 
Dodge  she  felt  life  would  be  clear. 

She  was  tempted  to  experiment — when  had  such 
a  possibility  occurred  to  her  before? — and  dis 
cover  just  how  far  in  several  directions  Pleydon's 
devotion  went.  This  would  be  easy  now,  she  was 
unrestrained  by  the  fact  of  Arnaud,  and  the  old 
shrinking  from  the  sculptor  happily  vanished. 
Yet  with  him  before  her,  on  one  of  his  infrequent 
visits  to  their  house,  she  realized  that  her  courage 
was  insufficient.  Was  it  that  or  something 
[213] 


LINDA    CONDON 

deeper — a  reluctance  to  turn  herself  like  a  knife 
in  the  source  of  the  profoundest  compliment  a 
woman  could  be  paid.  Linda  thought  too  highly 
of  his  love  for  that;  the  texture  of  the  carpet  had 
become  too  gratifying. 

They  were  all  three  in  the  library,  as  cus 
tomary;  and  Linda,  restless,  saw  her  reflection 
in  a  closed  long  window.  She  was  wearing  yel 
low,  the  color  of  the  jonquils  on  a  candle-stand; 
but  with  her  familiar  sash  tied  and  the  ends  fall 
ing  to  the  hem  of  her  skirt.  The  pointed  oval 
of  her  face  was  unchanged,  her  pallor,  the 
straight  line  of  her  black  bang,  the  blueness  of 
her  eyes,  were  as  they  had  been  a  surprisingly 
long  while  ago.  Arnaud,  with  a  disconcerting 
comprehension,  demanded,  "Well,  are  you  satis 
fied?"  She  replied  coolly,  "Entirely."  Pleydon, 
seated  for  over  an  hour  without  moving,  or  even 
the  trivial  relief  of  a  cigarette,  followed  her  with 
his  luminous  uncomfortable  gaze,  his  disem 
bodied  passion. 


[214] 


XXX 

LINDA  heard  Vigne's  laugh,  the  expres 
sion  of  a  sheer  lightness  of  heart,  follow 
ing  a  low  eager  murmur  of  voices  in  her 
daughter's  room,  and  she  was  startled  by  its  re 
semblance  to  the  gay  pitch  of  Mrs.  Moses  Feldt's 
old  merriment.  Three  of  Vigne's  friends  were 
with  her,  all  approximately  eighteen,  talking, 
Linda  knew,  men  and — it  was  autumn — antici 
pating  the  excitements  of  their  bow  to  formal  so 
ciety  that  winter.  They  had,  she  silently  added, 
little  enough  to  learn  about  the  latter.  Through 
the  year  past  they  had  been  to  a  dancing-class 
identical,  except  for  an  earlier  hour  and  age,  with 
mature  affairs;  but  before  that  they  had  been 
practically  introduced  to  the  pleasures  of  their  in 
heritance. 

The  men  were  really  boys  at  the  university, 
past    the    first    year,    receptacles    of    unlimited 
worldly  knowledge   and   experience.     They  be 
longed  to  exclusive  university  societies  and  eating 
[215] 


LINDA    CONDON 

clubs,  and  Linda  found  their  stiff  similarity  of 
correct  bigoted  pattern  highly  entertaining.  She 
had  no  illusions  about  what  might  be  called  their 
morals ;  they  were  midway  in  the  period  of  youth 
ful  unrestraint;  but  she  recognized  as  well  that 
their  attitude  toward,  for  example,  Vigne  was 
irreproachable.  Such  boys  affected  to  disdain 
the  girls  of  their  associated  families  ...  or 
imagined  themselves  incurably  in  love. 

The  girls,  for  their  part,  while  insisting  that 
forty  was  the  ideal  age  for  a  lover — the  terms 
changed  with  the  seasons,  last  year  "suitor"  had 
been  the  common  phrase — were  occasionally 
swept  in  young  company  into  a  high  irrational 
passion.  Mostly,  through  skillful  adult  pressure 
or  firm  negation,  such  affairs  came  to  nothing; 
but  even  these  were  sometimes  overcome.  And, 
when  Linda  had  been  disturbed  by  the  echo  of 
old  days  in  her  daughter's  tones,  she  was  consid 
ering  exactly  such  a  state. 

One  of  the  nicest  youths  imaginable,  Bailey 
Sandby,  had  lost  all  trace  of  superior  aloofness 
in  a  devotion  to  Vigne.  He  was  short,  squarely 
built,  with  clear  pink  cheeks,  steady  light  blue 
eyes  and  crisp  very  fair  hair.  This  was  his  last 
seasou  of  academic  instruction,  after  which  a 
[216] 


LINDA    CONDON 

number  of  years,  at  an  absurdly  low  payment, 
awaited  him  in  his  father's  bond  brokerage  con 
cern.  However,  he  was,  Linda  gathered,  im 
perious  in  his  urgent  need  for  Vigne's  favor. 

Ridiculous,  she  thought,  at  the  same  time 
illogically  rehearsing  the  resemblances  of  Vigne 
to  her  grandmother.  She  had  no  doubt  that  the 
parties  Vigne  shared  on  the  terraces  and  wide 
lawns,  in  the  informal  dancing  at  country  houses, 
were  sufficiently  sophisticated;  there  was  on  oc 
casion  champagne,  and — for  the  masculine  ele 
ment  anyhow — cocktails.  The  aroma  of  wine, 
lightly  clinging  to  her  young  daughter's  breath, 
filled  her  with  an  old  instinctive  sickness. 

She  had  spoken  to  Arnaud  who,  in  turn,  se- 
rerely  addressed  Vigne;  but  during  this  Linda 
had  been  oppressed  by  the  familiar  feeling  of  im 
potence.  The  girl,  of  course,  had  properly  heard 
them;  but  she  gave  her  mother  the  effect  of  slip 
ping  easily  beyond  their  grasp.  When  she  had 
gone  to  bed  Arnaud  repeated  a  story  brought  to 
him  by  the  juvenile  Lowrie,  under  the  influence 
of  a  temporary  indignation  at  his  sister's  unwar 
ranted  imposition  of  superiority.  Arnaud  went 
on: 

"Actually  they  had  this  kissing  contest,  it  was 
[217] 


LINDA    CONDON 

at  Chestnut  Hill,  with  a  watch  held;  and  Vigne, 
or  so  Lowrie  insisted,  won  the  prize  for  length  of 
time — something  like  a  minute.  Now,  when  I 
was  young — " 

Submerged  in  apprehensive  memory  Linda  lost 
most  of  his  account  of  the  Eden-like  youth  of  his 
earlier  day.  When,  at  last,  his  assertions  pierced 
her  abstraction,  it  was  only  to  bring  her  to  the 
realization  of  how  pathetically  little  he  knew  of 
either  Vigne  or  her.  She  weighed  the  question  of 
utter  frankness  here — -the  quality  enhanced  by 
universal  obscurity — but  she  was  obliged  to  check 
her  desire  for  perfect  understanding.  A  purely 
feminine  need  to  hide,  even  from  Arnaud,  any 
detracting  facts  about  women  shut  her  into  a 
diplomatic  silence.  In  reality  he  could  offer 
them  no  help ;  their  problems — in  a  world  created 
more  objectively  by  the  hand  of  man  than  God — 
were  singular  to  themselves.  Women  were  quite 
like  spoiled  captives  to  foreign  princes,  mask 
ing,  in  their  apparent  complacency,  a  necessarily 
secret  but  insidiously  tyrannical  control.  It 
wouldn't  do,  in  view  of  this,  to  expose  too  much. 

The  following  morning  it  was  Arnaud,  rather 
than  herself,  who  had  a  letter  from  Pleydon. 
"He  wants  us  to  come  over  to  New  York  and  his 
[218] 


LINDA   CONDON 

studio,"  the  former  explained.  "He  has  some 
commission  or  other  from  a  city  in  the  Middle 
West,  and  a  study  to  show  us.  I'd  like  it  very 
much;  we  haven't  seen  this  place,  and  his  sur 
roundings  are  not  to  be  overlooked." 

Pleydon's  rooms  were  directly  off  Central  Park 
West,  in  an  apartment  house  obviously  designed 
for  prosperous  creative  arts,  with  a  hall  frescoed 
in  the  tones  of  Puvis  de  Chavannes  and  an  ele 
vator  cage  beautifully  patterned  in  iron  grilling. 
Dodge  Pleydon  met  them  in  his  narrow  entry  and 
conducted  them  into  a  pleasant  reception-room. 
"It's  a  duplex,"  he  explained  of  his  quarters; 
"the  dining-room  you  see  and  the  kitchen's  be 
yond,  while  the  baths  and  all  that  are  over  our 
heads;  the  studio  fills  both  floors." 

There  were  low  book  cases  with  their  con 
tinuous  top  used  as  a  shelf  for  a  hundred  various 
objects,  deep  long  chairs  of  caressing  ease  and 
chairs  of  coffee-colored  wicker  with  amazingly 
high  backs  woven  with  designs  of  polished  shells 
into  the  semblance  of  spread  peacocks'  tails. 
The  yellow  silk  curtains  at  the  windows,  the  rug 
with  the  intricate  coloring  of  a  cashmere  shawl, 
the  Russian  tea  service,  were  in  a  perfection  of 
order;  and  Linda  almost  resentfully  acknowl- 
[219] 


LINDA   CONDON 

edged  the  skilful  efficiency  of  his  maid.  It  was 
surprising  that,  without  a  wife,  a  man  could  man 
age  such  a  degree  of  comfort! 

Over  tea  far  better  than  hers,  in  china  of  an 
infinitely  finer  fragility,  she  studied  Pleydon 
thoughtfully.  He  looked  still  again  perceptibly 
older,  his  face  continued  to  grow  sparer  of  flesh, 
emphasizing  the  aggressively  bony  structure  of 
his  head.  When  he  shut  his  mouth  after  a  de 
cided  statement  she  could  see  the  projection  of 
the  jaw  and  the  knotted  sinews  at  the  base  of  his 
cheeks.  No,  Dodge  didn't  seem  well.  She 
asked  if  there  had  been  any  return  of  the  fever 
and  he  nodded  in  an  impatient  affirmative,  re 
turning  at  once  to  the  temporarily  suspended  con 
versation  with  Arnaud.  There  was  a  vast  dif 
ference,  too,  in  the  way  in  which  he  talked. 

His  attitude  was  as  assertive  as  ever,  but  it 
had  less  expression  in  words;  unaccountable 
periods  of  silence,  almost  ill-natured,  overtook 
him,  spaces  of  abstraction  when  it  was  plain  that 
he  had  forgotten  the  presence  of  whoever  might 
be  by.  Even  direct  questions  sometimes  failed 
to  pierce  immediately  his  consciousness.  Dodge, 
Linda  told  herself,  lived  entirely  too  much 
alone.  Then  she  said  this  aloud,  thoughtlessly, 
[220] 


LINDA   CONDON 

and  she  was  startled  by  the  sudden  intolerable 
flash  of  his  gaze.  An  awkward  pause  followed, 
broken  by  the  uprearing  of  Pleydon's  consider 
able  length. 

"I  must  take  you  into  the  studio  before  it  is 
too  dark,"  he  proceeded.  "Every  creative  spirit 
knows  when  its  great  moment  has  come.  Well, 
mine  is  here."  The  men  stood  aside  as  Linda, 
her  head  positively  ringing  with  the  thrill  that 
was  like  a  strain  of  Gluck,  the  happy  sadness, 
entered  the  bare  high  spaciousness  of  Dodge 
Pleydon's  workroom. 


[221] 


XXXI 

EVERYTHING  she  saw,  the  stripped 
floor,  the  white  walls  bare  but  for  some 
casts  like  the  dismembered  fragments  of 
flawless  blanched  bodies,  the  inclined  plane  of 
the  wide  skylight,  bore  an  impalpable  white  dust 
of  dried  clay.  In  a  corner,  enclosed  in  low 
boards,  a  stooped  individual  with  wood-soled 
shoes  and  a  shovel  was  working  a  mass  of  clay 
over  which  at  intervals  he  sprinkled  water,  and 
at  intervals  halted  to  make  pliable  lumps  of  a 
uniform  size  which  he  added  to  a  pile  wrapped 
in  damp  cloths.  There  were  a  number  of  model 
ing  stands  with  twisted  wires  grotesquely  re 
sembling  a  child's  line  drawing  of  a  human  be 
ing;  while  a  stand  with  some  modeling  tools  on 
its  edge  bore  an  upright  figure  shapeless  in  its 
swathing  of  dampened  cloths. 

"The  great  moment,"  Pleydon  said  again,  in 

a  vibrant  tone.     "But  you  know  nothing  of  all 

this,"  he  directly  addressed  Linda.     "Neither, 

probably,  will  you  have  heard  of  Simon  Down- 

[222] 


LINDA    CONDON 

ige.  He  was  born  at  Cottarsport,  in  Massachu 
setts,  about  eighteen  forty ;  and,  after — in  the  sup 
port  of  his  hatred  of  any  slavery — he  fought 
through  the  Civil  War,  he  came  home  and  found 
that  his  town  stifled  him.  He  didn't  marry  at 
once,  as  so  many  returning  soldiers  did;  instead 
he  was  wedded  to  a  vision  of  freedom,  freedom 
of  opinion,  of  spirit,  worship — any  kind  of 
spaciousness  whatever.  And,  in  the  pursuit  of 
that,  he  went  West. 

"He  told  them  that  he  was  going  to  find — but 
found  was  the  word — a  place  where  men  could 
live  together  in  a  purity  of  motives  and  air.  No 
more,  you  understand;  he  hadn't  a  personal 
fanatical  belief  to  exploit  and  attract  the  hysteria 
of  women  and  insufficient  men.  He  was  not  a 
pathological  messiah;  but  only  Simon  Downige, 
an  individual  who  couldn't  comfortably  breathe 
the  lies  and  injustice  and  hypocrisy  of  the  or 
dinary  community.  No  doubt  he  was  unbal 
anced — his  sensitiveness  to  a  universal  condition 
would  prove  that.  Normally  people  remain  un 
disturbed  by  such  trivialities.  If  they  didn't  an 
end  would  come  to  one  or  the  other,  the  lies  or  the 
world. 

"He  traveled  part  way  in  a  Conestoga  wagon 
[223] 


LINDA    CONDON 

— a  flight  out  of  Egypt;  they  were  common  then, 
slow  canvas-covered  processions  with  entire  fam 
ilies  drawn  by  the  mysterious  magnetism  of  the 
West.  Then,  leaving  even  such  wayfarers,  he 
walked,  alone,  until  he  came  on  a  meadow  by  a 
little  river  and  a  grove  of  trees,  probably  cotton- 
woods.  .  .  .  That  was  Simon  Downige,  and 
that,  too,  was  Hesperia.  Yes,  he  was  unbal 
anced — the  old  Greek  name  for  beautiful  lands. 
It  is  a  city  now,  successful  and  corruptly  ad 
ministered — what  always  happens  to  such  visions. 

"It  is  necessary,  Linda,  as  I've  always  told 
you,  to  understand  the  whole  motive  behind  a 
creation  in  permanent  form.  A  son  of  Simon's — 
yes,  he  finally  married — a  unique  and  very  rich 
character,  wife  dead  and  no  children,  commis 
sioned  a  monument  to  the  founder  of  Hesperia,  in 
Ohio,  and  of  his  fortune. 

"They  even  have  a  civic  body  for  the  control 
of  public  building;  and  they  came  East  to  ap 
prove  my  statue,  or  rather  the  clay  sketch  for  it. 
They  were  very  solemn,  and  one,  himself  a 
sculptor,  a  graduate  of  the  Beaux  Arts,  ran  a 
suggestive  thumb  over  Simon  and  did  incredible 
damage.  But,  after  a  great  deal  of  hesitation, 
and  a  description  from  the  sculptor  of  what  he 
[224] 


LINDA   CONDON 

thought  excellently  appropriate  for  such  mag 
nificence,  they  accepted  my  study.  The  present 
Downige,  really — though  I  understand  there  is 
another  pretentious  branch  in  Hesperia — bullied 
them  into  it.  He  cursed  the  Beaux-Arts  gradu 
ate  with  the  most  brutal  and  satisfactory  free 
dom — the  tyranny  of  his  money;  the  crown,  you 
see,  of  Simon's  hope." 

He  unwrapped  one  by  one  the  wet  cloths ;  and 
Linda,  in  an  eagerness  sharp  like  anxiety,  finally 
saw  the  statue,  under  life-size,  of  a  seated  man 
with  a  rough  stick  and  bundle  at  his  feet.  A 
limp  hat  was  in  his  hand,  and,  beneath  a  brow  to 
which  the  hair  was  plastered  by  sweat,  his  eyes 
gazed  fixed  and  aspiring  into  a  hidden  dream 
perfectly  created  by  his  desire.  Here,  she  rea 
lized  at  last,  she  had  a  glimmer  of  the  beauty, 
the  creative  force,  that  animated  Dodge  Pleydon. 
Simon  Downige's  shoes  were  clogged  with  mud, 
his  entire  body,  she  felt,  ached  with  weariness; 
but  his  gaze — nothing  Linda  discovered  but 
shadows  over  two  depressions — was  far  away  in 
the  attainment  of  his  place  of  justice  and  truth. 

She  found  a  stool  and,  careless  of  the  film  of 
dust,  sat  absorbed  in  the  figure.  Pleydon  again 
had  lost  all  consciousness  of  their  presence;  he 
[225] 


LINDA    CONDON 

stood,  hands  in  pockets,  his  left  foot  slightly  ad 
vanced,  looking  at  his  work  from  under  drawn 
brows.  Arnaud  spoke  first: 

"It's  impertinent  to  congratulate  you,  Pleydon. 
You  know  what  you've  done  better  than  any  one 
else  could.  You  have  all  our  admiration." 
Linda  watched  the  tenderness  with  which  the  other 
covered  Simon  Downige's  vision  in  clay.  Later, 
returning  home  after  dinner,  Arnaud  specu 
lated  about  Pleydon's  remarkable  increase  in 
power.  "I  had  given  him  up,"  he  went  on;  "I 
thought  he  was  lost  in  those  notorious  debauches 
of  esthetic  emotions.  Does  he  still  speak  of 
loving  you?" 

"Yes,"  Linda  replied.  "Are  you  annoyed  by 
it?"  He  answered,  "What  good  if  I  were?" 
She  considered  him,  turned  in  his  chair  to  face 
her,  thoughtfully.  "I  haven't  the  slightest  doubt 
of  its  quality,  however — all  in  that  Hesperia  of 
old  Downige's.  To  love  you,  my  dear  Linda, 
has  certain  well-defined  resemblances  to  a  calam 
ity.  If  you  ask  me  if  I  object  to  what  you  do 
give  him,  my  answer  must  shock  the  gods  of  art. 
I  would  rather  you  didn't." 

"What  is   it,   Arnaud?"   she   demanded.     "I 
haven't  the  slightest  idea.     I  wish  I  had." 
[226] 


LINDA    CONDON 

"Platonic,"  he  told  her  shortly.  "The  term 
has  been  hopelessly  ruined,  yet  the  sense,  the 
^ruth,  I  am  forced  to  believe,  remains." 

"But  you  know  how  stupid  I  am  and  that  I 
can't  understand  you." 

"The  woman  in  whom  a  man  sees  God,"  he 
proceeded  irritably: 

"  'La  figlia  della  sua  mente,  I'amorosa  idea.' '' 

"Oh,"  she  cried,  wrung  with  a  sharp  obscure 
hurt.  "I  know  that,  I've  heard  it  before."  Her 
excitement  faded  at  her  absolute  inability  to 
place  the  circumstances  of  her  memory.  The 
sound  of  the  words  vanished,  leaving  no  more 
than  the  familiar  deep  trouble,  the  disappoint 
ing' sensation  of  almost  grasping — Linda  was  un 
able  to  think  what. 

"After  all,  you  are  my  wife."  He  had  recov 
ered  his  normal  shy  humor.  "I  can  prove  it. 
You  are  the  irreproachable  mother  of  our  unsur 
passed  children.  You  have  a  hopeless  vision — 
like  this  Simon's — of  seeing  me  polished  and  de 
cently  pressed;  and  I  insist  on  your  continuing 
with  the  whole  show." 

Her  mind  arbitrarily  shifted  to  the  thought 
of  her  father,  who  had  walked  out  of  his  house, 
left — yes — his  family,  without  any  intimation. 
[227] 


LINDA   CONDON 

Then,  erratically,  it  turned  to  Vigne,  to  Vigne 
and  young  Sandby  with  his  fresh  cheeks  and  im 
pending  penniless  years  acquiring  a  comprehen 
sion  of  the  bond  market.  She  said,  "I  wonder 
if  she  really  likes  Bailey?"  Arnaud's  energy 
of  dismay  was  laughable,  "What  criminal  folly! 
They  haven't  finished  Mother  Goose  yet." 


[228] 


XXXII 

LINDA,  who  expected  to  see  Pleydon's 
statue  of  Simon  Downige  finished  im 
mediately  in  a  national  recognition  of  its 
splendor,  was  disappointed  by  his  explanation 
that,  probably,  it  would  not  be  ready  for  casting 
within  two  years.  He  intended  to  model  it  again, 
life-size,  before  he  was  ready  for  the  heroic. 
April,  the  vivifying,  had  returned;  and,  as  al 
ways  in  the  spring,  Linda  was  mainly  conscious 
of  the  mingled  assuaging  sounds  of  life  newly 
admitted  through  open  windows.  A  single 
shaded  lamp  was  lighted  by  a  far  table,  where 
Arnaud  sat  cutting  the  pages  of  The  Living  Age 
with  an  ivory  blade;  Dodge  was  blurred  in  the 
semi-obscurity. 

He  came  over  to  see  them  more  frequently  now, 
through  what  he  called  the  great  moment — so 
tiresomely  extended — of  his  life.  Pleydon  came 
oftener  but  he  said  infinitely  less.  It  was  his 
custom  to  arrive  for  dinner  and  suddenly  depart 
early  or  late  in  the  evening.  At  times  she  went 
[229] 


LINDA    CONDON 

up  to  her  room  and  left  the  two  almost  morosely 
silent  men  to  their  own  thoughts  or  pages;  at 
others  she  complained — no  other  woman  alive 
would  stay  with  such  uninteresting  and  thor 
oughly  selfish  creatures.  They  never  made  the 
pretense  of  an  effort  to  consider  or  amuse  her. 
At  this  Arnaud  would  put  aside  his  book  and  be 
gin  an  absurd  social  conversation  in  the  man 
ner  of  Vigne's  associates.  Pleydon,  however, 
wouldn't  speak;  nothing  broke  the  somberness 
of  his  passionate  absorption  in  invisible  tyran 
nies.  She  gave  up,  finally,  a  persistent  effort  to 
lighten  his  moods.  Annoyed  she  told  him  that 
if  he  did  not  change  he'd  be  sick,  and  then  where 
would  everything  be. 

All  at  once,  through  the  open  window,  she 
heard  Stella,  her  mother,  laughing;  the  carelessly 
gay  sound  overwhelmed  her  with  an  instinctive 
unreasoning  dread.  Linda  rose  with  a  half 
gasp — but  of  course  it  was  Vigne  in  the  garden 
with  Bailey  Sandby. 

She  sank  back  angry  because  she  had  been 
startled;  but  her  irritation  perished  in  disturbing 
thought.  It  wasn't,  she  told  herself,  Vigne's  ac 
tions  that  made  her  fear  the  future  so  much  as 
her,  Linda's,  knowledge  of  the  possibilities  of  the 
[230] 


LINDA    CONDON 

past.  Her  undying  hatred  of  that  existence 
choked  in  her  throat;  the  chance  of  its  least 
breath  touching  Vigne,  Arnaud's  daughter, 
roused  her  to  any  embittered  hazard. 

The  girl,  she  was  certain,  returned  a  part  at 
least  of  Bailey's  feeling.  Linda  expected  no  con 
fidences — what  had  she  done  to  have  them? — 
and  Arnaud  was  right,  affairs  of  the  heart  were 
never  revealed  until  consummated.  Her  conclu 
sion  had  been  reached  by  indirect  quiet  deduc 
tions.  Vigne,  lately,  was  different;  her  attitude 
toward  her  mother  had  changed  to  the  subtle  re 
serve  of  feminine  maturity.  Her  appearance, 
overnight,  it  seemed,  had  improved;  her  color 
was  deeper,  a  delicate  flush  burned  at  any  sur 
prise  in  her  cheeks,  and  the  miracle  of  her  body 
was  perfected. 

It  wasn't,  Linda  continued  silently,  that  Vigne 
could  ever  follow  the  example  of  Stella  Condon 
through  the  hotels  and  lives  of  men  partly  bald, 
prodigal,  and  with  distant  families.  Whatever 
happened  to  her  would  be  in  excellent  surround 
ings  and  taste;  but  the  result — the  sordid  havoc, 
inside  and  out,  the  satiety  alternating  with  the 
points  of  brilliancy,  and  finally,  inexorably, 
sweeping  over  them  in  a  leaden  tide — would  be 
[231] 


LINDA   CONDON 

identical.  She  wondered  a  little  at  the  strength 
of  her  detestation  for  such  living;  it  wasn't 
moral  in  any  sense  with  which  she  was  familiar; 
in  fact  it  appeared  to  have  a  vague  connection 
with  her  own  revolt  from  the  destruction  of  death. 
She  wanted  Vigne  as  well  to  escape  that  catas 
trophe,  to  hold  inviolate  the  beauty  of  her  youth, 
her  fineness  and  courage. 

She  was  convinced,  too,  that  if  she  loved 
Bailey,  and  was  disappointed,  some  of  the  harm 
would  be  done  immediately;  Linda  saw,  in  imagi 
nation,  the  pure  flame  of  Vigne's  passion  fanned 
and  then  arbitrarily  extinguished.  She  saw  the 
resemblance  of  the  dead  woman,  all  those  other 
painted  shades,  made  stronger.  A  sentence 
formed  so  vividly  in  her  mind  that  she  looked  up 
apprehensively,  certain  that  she  had  spoken  it 
aloud : 

If  Vigne  does  come  to  care  for  him  they  must 
marry. 

Her  thoughts  left  the  girl  for  Arnaud — he 
would  absolutely  oppose  her  there,  and  she  specu 
lated  about  the  probable  length  his  opposition 
would  reach.  What  would  he  say  to  her?  It 
couldn't  be  helped,  in  particular  it  couldn't  be 
explained,  neither  to  him  nor  to  the  friendly  cor- 
[232] 


LINDA   CONDON 

rectness  of  Bailey  Sandby's  mother.  She,  alone, 
must  accept  any  responsibility,  all  blame. 

The  threatened  situation  developed  more 
quickly  than  she  had  anticipated.  Linda  met 
Bailey,  obviously  disturbed,  in  the  portico,  leav 
ing  their  house;  his  manner,  mechanically,  was 
good ;  and  then,  with  an  irrepressible  boyish  rush 
of  feeling,  he  stopped  her: 

"Vigne  and  I  love  each  other  and  Mr.  Hallet 
won't  hear  of  it.  He  insulted  us  with  the  verse 
about  the  old  woman  who  went  to  the  cupboard  to 
get  a  bone,  and  if  he  hadn't  been  her  father — " 
he  breathed  a  portentous  and  difficult  self-repres 
sion.  "Then  he  took  a  cowardly  advantage  of 
my  having  no  money,  just  now;  right  after  I 
explained  how  I  was  going  to  make  wads — with 
Vigne." 

An  indefinable  excitement  possessed  Linda,  ac 
companied  by  a  sudden  acute  fear  of  what  Arnaud 
might  say.  She  wanted  more  than  anything  else 
in  life  to  go  quickly,  inattentively,  past  Bailey 
Sandby  and  up  to  her  room.  Nothing  could  be 
easier,  more  obvious,  than  her  disapproval  of  a 
moneyless  boy.  She  made  a  step  forward  with 
an  assumed  resolute  ignoring  of  his  disturbed 
presence.  It  was  useless.  A  dread  greater  than 
[233] 


LINDA    CONDON 

her  fright  at  Arnaud  held  her  in  the  portico,  her 
hand  lifted  to  the  polished  knob  of  the  inner  door. 
Linda  turned  slowly,  cold  and  white,  "Wait," 
she  said  to  his  shoulder  in  an  admirable  coat; 
then  she  gazed  steadily  into  his  frank  pained 
eyes. 

"How  do  you  know  that  you  love  Vigne?"  she 
demanded.  "You  are  so  young  to  be  certain  it 
will  last  always.  And  Vigne — " 

"How  does  any  one  know?"  he  replied.  "How 
did  you?  Married  people  always  forget  their 
own  experiences,  the  happy  way  things  went  with 
them.  From  all  I  see  money  hasn't  much  to  do 
with  loving  each  other.  But,  of  course,  I'm  not 
going  to  be  poor,  not  with  Vigne.  Nobody 
could.  She'd  inspire  them.  Mr.  Hallet  knows 
all  about  me,  too;  and  he's  the  oldest  kind  of  a 
friend  of  the  family.  I  suppose  when  he  sees 
father  at  the  Rittenhouse  Club  they'll  have  a 
laugh — a  laugh  at  Vigne  and  me.'7  His  hand, 
holding  the  brim  of  a  soft  brown  hat,  clenched 
tensely. 

"No,"  Linda  told  him,  "they  won't  do  that." 
Her  obscure  excitement  was  communicated  to 
him.  "Why  not?"  he  demanded. 

"Because,"  she  paused  to  steady  her  voice,  "be- 
[234] 


LINDA   CONDON 

cause  I  am  going  to  take  a  very  great  responsi 
bility.  If  it  fails,  if  you  let  it  fail,  you'll  ruin 
ever  so  much.  Yes,  Mr.  Hallet,  I  am  sure,  will 
consent  to  your  marrying  Vigne."  She  escaped 
at  the  first  opening  from  his  incoherent  gratitude. 
Arnaud  was  in  the  library,  and  she  stopped  in 
the  hall,  busy  with  the  loosening  of  her  veil. 
Perhaps  it  would  be  better  to  speak  to  him  after 
dinner;  she  ought  to  question  Vigne  first;  but,  as 
she  stood  debating,  her  daughter  passed  her  tem 
pestuously,  blurred  with  crying,  and  Arnaud 
angrily  demanded  her  presence. 


[235] 


XXXIII 

44"^T  yOU  were  quite  right,"  he  cried;  "this 
^^  young  idiot  Sandby  has  been  telling 
JL  Vigne  that  he  loves  her;  and  now 
Vigne  assures  me,  with  tears,  that  she  likes  it! 
They  want  to  get  married — next  week,  tomor 
row,  this  evening."  Linda  stood  by  the  window; 
soon  the  magnolia-tree  would  be  again  laden  with 
flowers.  She  gathered  her  courage  into  a  de 
termined  composure  of  tone.  "I  saw  Bailey  out 
side,"  she  admitted.  "He  told  me.  It  seems 
excellent  to  me." 

Arnaud  Hallet  incredulously  challenged  her. 
"What  do  you  mean — that  you  gave  him  a  trace 
of  encouragement!"  Linda  replied: 

"I  said  that  I  was  certain  you  would  con 
sent."  She  halted  his  exasperated  gesture. 
"You  think  Vigne  is  nothing  but  a  child,  and  yet 
she  is  as  old  as  I  was  at  our  wedding.  My 
mother  was  no  older  when  Bartram  Lowrie  mar-1 
ried  her.  I  think  Vigne  is  very  fortunate, 
[236] 


LINDA   CONDON 

Bailey  is  as  nice  as  possible;  and,  as  he  said,  it 
isn't  as  if  you  knew  nothing  of  the  Sandbys; 
they  are  as  dignified  as  the  Lowries." 

An  expression  she  had  never  before  seen  hard 
ened  his  countenance  into  a  sarcasm  that  trav 
estied  his  customary  humor.  "You  realize,  of 
course,  that  except  for  what  his  father  gives  him 
young  Sandby  is  wretchedly  poor.  He's  nice 
enough  but  what  has  that  to  do  with  it?  And,  in 
particular,  how  does  it  touch  you,  Linda  Condon? 
Do  you  suppose  I  can  ever  forget  your  answer 
that  time  I  first  asked  you  to  marry  me?  You 
wouldn't  consider  a  poor  man;  you  were  worth, 
really,  a  hundred  thousand  a  year;  but,  if  noth 
ing  better  came  along,  you  might  sacrifice  your 
self  for  fifty." 

"I  remember  very  well,"  she  answered;  "and, 
curiously  enough,  I  am  not  ashamed.  I  was 
very  sensible  then,  in  a  horrible  position  with 
extravagant  habits.  They  were  me.  I  couldn't 
change  myself.  Without  money  I  should  have 
made  you,  any  man,  entirely  miserable.  Arnaud, 
f  I  hadn't — I  haven't  now — the  ability  to  see  every- 
g  important  through  the  affections,  like  so 
many  many  women.  You  often  told  me  that; 
who  hasn't?  I  have  always  admitted  it  wasn't 
[237] 


LINDA    CONDON 

pleasant  nor  praiseworthy.  But  how,  to  use  your 
own  words,  does  all  that  affect  Vigne?  She  isn't 
cold  but  very  warm-hearted;  and,  instead  of  my 
experience,  she  has  her  own  so  much  better  feel- 
ing." 

"I  absolutely  refuse  to  allow  anything  of  the 
sort,"  he  declared  sharply.  "I  won't  even  dis 
cuss  it — for  three  years.  Tell  this  Sandby  in 
fant,  if  you  like,  to  come  back  then." 

"In  three  years,  or  in  one  year,  Vigne  may  be 
quite  different,  yes — less  lovable.  Happiness, 
too,  is  queer,  Arnaud;  there  isn't  a  great  deal  of 
it.  Not  an  overwhelming  amount.  If  it  ap 
pears  for  an  instant  it  must  be  held  as  tightly 
as  possible.  It  doesn't  come  back,  you  know. 
Don't  turn  to  your  book  yet — you  can't  get  rid  of 
us,  of  Vigne  and  me,  like  that;  and  then  it's 
rude ;  the  first  time,  I  believe,  you  have  ever  been 
impolite  to  me." 

" Forgive  me,"  he  spoke  formally.  "You  seem 
to  think  that  I  am  as  indifferent  as  yourself. 
You  might  be  asking  the  day  of  the  week  to  judge 
from  your  calm  appearance.  The  emotion  of  a 
father,  or  even  of  a  mother,  perhaps,  you  hav 
never  explored.  On  the  whole  you  are  fortunate. 
[238] 


LINDA    CONDON 

And  you  are  always  protected  by  your  celebrated 
honesty."  She  said: 

"I  promised  Bailey  your  consent." 

"Why  bother  about  that?  It  isn't  necessary 
for  your  new  romantic  mood.  An  elopement, 
with  you  to  steady  the  ladder,  would  be  more  ap 
propriate." 

She  repeated  the  fact  of  her  engagement. 
Her  dread  for  him  had  vanished,  its  place 
now  taken  by  a  distrust  of  what,  in  her  merged 
detachment  and  suffering,  she  might  blunder 
ingly  do.  At  the  back  of  this  she  realized 
that  his  case,  his  position,  was  hopeless.  With 
out  warning,  keen  and  undimmed,  his  love  for 
her  flashed  through  his  resentful  misery.  There 
was  no  spoken  acknowledgement  of  surrender; 
he  sank  into  his  chair  dejected  and  pitiable,  in 
finitely  gray.  His  shoes,  on  the  brightness  of 
the  hooked  rug,  were  dingy,  his  coat  drawn  and 
wrinkled. 

Linda  saw  herself  on  her  knees  before  him,  be 
fore  his  patience  and  generosity,  sobbing  her  con 
trition  into  his  forgiving  hands.  She  longed  with 
Jkevery  nerve — as  she  had  so  often  before — to  lose 
herself  in  passionate  emotion.  She  had  never 
[239] 


LINDA    CONDON 

been  more  erect  or  withdrawn,  never  essentially 
less  touched.  After  a  little,  waiting  for  him  to 
speak,  she  saw  that  he,  too,  had  retreated  into  the 
profound  depths  of  his  own  illusions  and  de 
spairs. 


[240] 


XXXIV 

FOR  a  surprising  while — even  in  the  face 
of  Vigne's  radiance — Arnaud  was  as  still 
and  shadowed  as  the  inert  surface  of  a 
dammed  stream.  Then  slowly,  the  slenderest 
trickle  at  first,  his  wit  revived  his  spirit;  and  he 
opened  an  unending  mock-solemn  attack  on 
Bailey  Sandby's  eminently  serious  acceptance  of 
the  responsibilities  of  his  allowed  love. 

The  boy  had  left  the  university,  and  his  father 
— a  striking  replica  of  Arnaud's  prejudices,  im 
patience  and  fundamental  kindness — exchanged 
with  Vigne's  male  parent  the  most  dismal  proph 
ecies  together  with  concrete  plans  for  their  chil 
dren's  future  security.  This,  inevitably,  re 
sulted  in  Vigne's  marriage;  a  ceremony  unat 
tended  by  Pleydon  except  by  the  presence  of  a 
very  liberal  check. 

The  life-size  version  of  his  Simon  Downige 

was  again  under  way — it  had  been  torn  down, 

Linda  knew,  more  than  once — and  he  was  in  a 

fever  of  composition.     Nor  was  this,  she  de- 

[241] 


LINDA    CONDON 

cided  with  Arnaud,  his  only  oppression:  the 
Asiatic  fever  clung  to  him  with  disquieting  per 
sistence.  Pleydon  himself  admitted  he  had  a  de 
gree  or  two  in  the  evening. 

Linda  was  seated  in  his  studio  near  Central 
Park  West,  perhaps  a  year  later,  and  she  observed 
aloud  that  so  much  wet  clay  around  was  bad  for 
him.  He  laughed :  nothing  now  could  happen  to 
him,  he  was  forever  beyond  accident,  sickness, 
death — his  statue  for  the  monument  in  Hesperia 
was  finished.  It  stood  revealed  before  them, 
practically  as  Linda  had  first  seen  it,  but  en 
larged,  towering,  as  if  the  vision  it  portrayed  had 
grown,  would  continue  to  grow  eternally,  because 
of  the  dignity  of  its  hope,  the  necessity  of  its 
realization. 

"Now,"  she  said,  "it  will  go  to  the  foundry  and 
be  cast."  He  corrected  her.  "You  will  go  to  the 
foundry  and  be  cast  ...  in  bronze."  A  distinct 
graceful  happiness  possessed  her  at  the  knowledge 
that  his  love  for  her  was  as  constant  as  though 
it,  too,  were  metal.  Not  flesh  but  bronze,  spirit, 
he  insisted. 

The  multiplying  years  made  that  no  more  com 
prehensible  than  when,  a  child,  she  had  thrilled 
in  a  waking  dream.  Love,  spirit,  death.  Three 
[242] 


LINDA   CONDON 

mysteries.  But  only  one,  she  thought,  was  in 
evitably  hers,  the  last.  To  be  loved  was  not 
love  itself,  but  only  the  edge  of  its  cloak;  re 
sponse  was  an  indivisible  part  of  realization. 
No,  sterility  was  the  measure — of  its  absence. 
And  she  was,  Linda  felt,  in  spite  of  Vigne  and 
Lowrie,  the  latter  a  specially  vigorous  contradic 
tion,  the  most  sterile  woman  alive.  There  were 
always  Dodge's  assurances,  but  clay,  stone,  metal, 
were  cold  for  a  belief  to  embrace.  And  she  was, 
she  knew,  lovelier  now  than  she  had  ever  been  be 
fore,  than  she  would  ever  be  again. 


[243] 


XXXV 

THE  faint  ringing  of  the  bell  from  outside 
that  probably  announced  Arnaud  sounded 
unreal,  futile,  to  Linda.  He  came  into 
the  studio,  and  at  once  a  discussion  began  be 
tween  the  two  men  of  the  difference  in  the  surfaces 
of  clay  and  bronze.  The  talk  then  shifted  to  the 
pictorial  sources  of  the  heroic  Simon  Downige  be 
fore  them,  and  Linda  declared,  "Dodge,  you  have 
never  made  a  head  of  me.  How  very  unflatter 
ing!" 

"You're  an  affair  for  a  painter,"  he  replied; 
"Goya  or  Alfred  Stevens.  No  one  but  Goya 
could  have  found  a  white  for  you,  with  the  quality 
of  flower  petals;  and  Stevens  would  have  fixed 
you  in  an  immortality  of  delicate  color,  sur 
rounded  by  your  Philadelphia  garden."  He 
stood  quite  close  to  her,  with  his  jacket  dragged 
forward  by  hands  thrust  into  its  pockets,  and  he 
added  at  the  end  of  a  somber  interrogation,  "But 
if  you  would  really  like  to  know  why — " 

In  a  moment  more,  she  recognized,  Dodge 
[244] 


LINDA    CONDON 

would  explain  his  feeling  for  her — to  Arnaud,  to 
any  one  who  might  be  present.  The  gleam  in 
his  eyes,  his  remoteness  from  earthly  concern, 
were  definitely  not  normal.  Pleydon,  his  love, 
terrified  her.  "No,"  she  said  with  an  assumed 
hurried  lightness,  "don't  try  to  explain.  I  must 
manage  to  survive  the  injury  to  my  vanity." 

They  left  New  York  almost  immediately,  Pley 
don  suddenly  determining  to  go  with  them;  and 
later  were  scattered  through  the  Hallet  household. 
Vigne  and  her  husband  were  temporarily  living 
there;  with  their  heads  close  together  they  were 
making  endless  computations,  numerous  floor 
plans  and  elevations.  Linda,  at  the  piano  in  the 
drawing-room,  could  hear  them  through  the  hall. 
Pleydon  was  lounging  in  a  chair  beyond  her. 
She  couldn't  play  but  she  was  able,  slowly,  to 
pick  out  the  notes  of  simple  and  familiar  airs — 
echoes  of  Gluck  and  blurred  motives  of  Scar 
latti.  It  was  for  herself,  she  explained;  the 
sounds,  however  crude  and  disconnected,  brought 
things  back  to  her.  What  things,  she  replied  to 
Pleydon's  query,  she  didn't  in  the  least  know;  but 
pleasant. 

The  fact  that  she  understood  so  little  depressed 
her  with  increasing  frequency.  It  was  well 
[245] 


LINDA    CONDON 

enough  to  be  ignorant  as  a  girl,  or  even  as  a 
young  woman  newly  married;  but  she  had  left 
all  that  behind;  she  had  lost  her  youth  without 
any  compensating  gain  of  knowledge.  Linda 
could  not  assure  herself  that  life  was  clearer 
than  it  had  been  to  her  serious  childhood.  It 
had  always  been  easily  measured  on  the  surface; 
she  had  had  a  very  complete  grasp  of  its  material 
aspects  almost  at  once,  accomplishing  exactly 
what  she  had  planned.  Perhaps  this  was  all; 
and  her  trouble  an  evidence  of  weakness— ^the  in 
decision,  she  saw  with  contempt,  that  kept  so 
many  people  in  a  constant  agitation  of  disap 
pointment. 

Perhaps  this  was  enough;  more  than  the  ma 
jority  had  or  accomplished.  She  made,  again, 
a  resolute  effort  to  be  contented,  at  rest.  Her 
straying  fingers  clumsily  wrought  a  fragmentary 
refrain  that  mocked  her  determination.  It 
wasn't  new,  this — this  dissatisfaction;  but  it  had 
grown  sharper.  As  she  was  older  her  restlessness 
increased  at  the  realization  that  life,  opportunity, 
were  slipping  from  her.  Soon  she  would  be 
forty. 

The  conviction  seized  her  that  most  lives  re 
flected  hers  in  that  their  questioning  was  never 
[246] 


LINDA   CONDON 

answered.  The  fortunate,  then,  were  the  in 
curious  and  the  hearts  undisturbed  by  a  madden 
ing  thrill.  She  said  aloud,  "The  ones  who  never 
heard  music."  Pleydon  was  without  a  sign  that 
she  had  spoken.  Her  emotions  were  very  deli 
cate,  very  fragile,  and  enormously  difficult  to  per 
ceive.  They  were  like  plants  in  stony  ground. 
Where  had  she  heard  that— out  of  the  Bible? 
Then  she  thought  of  her  failure  to  get  anything 
from  religion — a  part  of  her  inability  to  drink  at 
the  springs  which  others  declared  so  refreshing. 
Linda  pressed  her  hands  more  sharply  on  the  keys 
and  the  answering  discord  had  the  effect  of 
waking  her  to  reality. 

Pleydon  remained  uritil  the  following  after 
noon,  and  then  was  lost — in  the  foundry  casting 
his  statue — for  six  months.  Arnaud  went  over 
to  view  the  completion  of  the  bronze  and  re 
turned  filled  with  enthusiasm.  "Its  simplicity 
is  the  surprising  part,"  he  told  her.  "The  barest 
statement  possible.  But  Pleydon  himself  is  in  a 
disturbing  condition ;  I  can't  decide  if  it  is  mental 
or  physical.  The  fever  of  course;  yet  that  doesn't 
account  for  his  distance  from  ordinary  living. 
The  truth  is,  I  suppose,  that  men  weren't  designed 
for  great  arts,  and  nature,  like  the  jealous  God  of 
[247] 


LINDA    CONDON 

the  Hebrews,  retaliates.  It  is  absurd,  but  Pley- 
don  reminds  me  of  you;  you're  totally  different, 
I  suppose  it's  because  of  the  detachment  you  have 
in  common."  He  veered  to  a  detail  of  Lowrie's 
first  year  at  a  university,  and  exhibited,  against  a 
decent  endeavor  to  the  contrary,  his  boundless 
pride  in  their  son. 

The  boy  was,  Linda  acknowledged,  more  than 
commonly  dependable  and  able.  He  was  heavy, 
like  his  father,  and  so  diffident  that  he  almost 
stuttered;  but  his  mental  processes  flashed  in 
quick  intuitive  perceptions.  Lowrie  was  an  easy 
and  brilliant  student;  and,  perhaps  because  of 
this,  of  his  mental  certainty,  he  was  not  intimate 
with  her  as  Arnaud  had  hoped  and  predicted.  It 
seemed  to  Linda  that  he  instinctively  penetrated 
her  inner  doubt  and  regarded  it  without  sym 
pathy.  In  this  he  was  her  son.  Lowrie  was  a 
confident  and  unsympathetic  critic  of  humanity. 

Even  now,  so  soon,  there  was  no  question  of 
his  success  in  the  law  his  fitness  had  elected. 
The  springs  of  his  being  were  purely  intellectual, 
reasoning.  In  him  Linda  saw  magnified  her 
own  coldness;  and,  turned  on  herself,  she  viewed 
it  with  an  arbitrary  feminine  resentment.  He 
was  actually  courteous  to  her;  but  under  all  their 
[248] 


LINDA   CONDON 

intercourse  there  was  a  perceptible  impatience. 
His  scorn  of  other  women,  girls,  however,  was 
openly  expressed  and  honest;  it  had  no  trace  of 
the  mere  affectation  of  pessimism  natural  to  his 
age.  Arnaud,  less  thoughtful  than  she,  was 
vastly  entertained  by  this,  and  drew  Lowrie  out 
in  countless  sly  sallies  and  contradictions. 

Yes,  he  would  succeed,  but,  after  all,  what 
would  his  success  be  worth — placed,  that  was, 
against  Vigne's  radiant  happiness,  Bailey  Sand- 
by's  quiet  eyes  and  the  quality  of  his  return  home 
each  evening? 

Her  thoughts  came  back  to  Pleydon — she  had 
before  her  a  New  York  paper  describing  the  cere 
mony  of  unveiling  his  Simon  Downige  at  Hes- 
peria.  There  was  a  long  learned  article  praising 
its  beauty  and  emphasizing  Pleydon's  eminence. 
He  was,  it  proceeded,  an  anomaly  in  an  age  of 
momentary  experimental  talents — a  humanized 
Greek  force.  He  didn't  belong  to  to-day  but  to 
yesterday  and  to-morrow.  This  gave  her  an  un^ 
comfortable  vision  of  Dodge  in  space,  with  no 
warm  points  of  contact.  She,  too,  was  suspended 
in  that  vague  emptiness.  Linda  had  the  sensa 
tion  of  grasping  at  streamers,  forms,  of  sparkling 
mist.  A  strange  position  in  view  of  her  unde- 
[249] 


LINDA    CONDON 

niable  common  sense,  the  solid  foundations  of 
her  temperament  and  experience.  She  saw  from 
the  paper,  further,  that  the  Downige  who  had 
commissioned  the  monument  was  dead. 


[250] 


XXXVI 

IN  the  middle  of  the  festive  period  that  con 
nected  Christmas  with  the  new  year  Arnaud 
turned  animatedly  from  his  breakfast  scan 
ning  of  the  news.  "It  seems,"  he  told  her,  "that 
a  big  rumpus  has  developed  in  Hesperia  over  the 
Pleydon  statue — the  present  Downige  omnipo 
tence,  never  friendly  with  our  old  gentleman,  has 
condemned  its  bronze  founder.  You  know  what 
I  mean.  It's  an  insult  to  their  pride,  their  money 
and  position,  to  see  him  perpetuated  as  a  tramp. 
On  the  contrary  he  was  a  very  respectable  indi 
vidual  from  a  prominent  family  and  town. 

"They  have  been  moving  the  local  heavens, 
ever  since  the  monument  was  placed,  to  have  it 
set  aside.  I  suppose  they  would  have  succeeded, 
too,  if  a  large  amount  given  to  the  city  were  not 
contingent  on  its  preservation.  But  then  they 
can  always  donate  more  money  in  the  cause  of 
their  sacred  respectability." 

Linda  had  never,  she  exclaimed,  heard  of  any 
thing  more  disgusting.  It  was  plain  that  Hes- 
[251] 


LINDA    CONDON 

peria  knew  nothing  of  art.  "Every  one,"  she  ran 
on  in  the  heat  of  her  resentment,  "every  one,  that 
is,  who  should  decide,  agrees  it's  magnificent. 
They  were  frightfully  lucky  to  get  it — Dodge's 
finest  work."  She  wrote  at  once  to  Pleydon  com 
manding  his  presence  and  expressing  her  con 
tempt  of  such  depravity  of  opinion.  To  her  sur 
prise  he  was  undisturbed,  apparently,  by  the  con 
demnation  of  his  monument. 

He  even  laughed  at  her  energy  of  scorn.  She 
was  hurt,  perceptibly  silenced,  with  a  feeling  of 
having  been  misunderstood  or  rather  under 
valued.  Her  disturbance  at  any  blame  attached 
to  the  statue  of  Simon  Downige  was  extremely 
acute.  But,  she  thought,  if  it  failed  to  worry 
Dodge  why  should  she  bother.  She  did,  in  spite 
of  this  philosophy;  Simon  was  tremendously  im 
portant  to  her. 

He  stood  for  things:  she  had  watched  his  evo 
lution  from  the  clay  sketch,  and  in  Pleydon's 
mind,  to  the  final  heroic  proportions;  and  she 
had  taken  for  granted  that  a  grateful  world  would 
see  him  in  her  light.  A  woman,  she  decided,  had 
made  the  trouble;  and  she  hated  her  with  a  per 
sonal  vigor.  Pleydon  said: 

"I  told  you  that  old  Simon  was  unbalanced; 
[252] 


LINDA    CONDON 

now  you  can  see  it  by  his  reception  in  a  success 
ful  city.  The  sculptor — do  you  remember  him, 
a  Beaux-Arts  graduate? — admits  that  he  had  al 
ways  opposed  it,  but  that  political  motives  over 
bore  his  pure  protest.  There  is  a  scheme  now  to 
build  a  pavilion,  for  babies,  and  shut  out  the 
monument  from  open  view.  They  may  do  that 
but  time  will  sweep  away  their  walls.  If  I  had 
modeled  Simon  Downige,  yes,  he  would  go;  but 
I  modeled  his  vision,  his  aspiration — the  hope  of 
all  men  for  release  and  purity. 

"Downige  and  the  individual  babies  are  un 
important  compared  to  a  vision  of  perfection,  of 
escape.  As  long  as  men  live,  if  they  live,  they'll 
reach  up;  and  that  gesture  in  itself  is  heaven. 
Not  accomplishment.  The  spirit  dragging  the 
flesh  higher;  but  spirit  alone — empty  balloons. 
A  dream  in  bronze,  harder  even  than  men's  heads, 
more  durable  than  their  prejudices,  so  permanent 
that  it  will  wear  out  their  ignorance;  and  in  the 
end — always  in  the  end — they'll  bring  their 
wreath. 

"A  replica  has  gone  to  Cottarsport,  from  me; 
and  you  ought  to  see  it  there,  on  a  block  of  New 
England  granite.  It's  in  the  Common,  a  wind 
swept  reach  with  low  houses  and  a  white  steeple 
[253] 


LINDA    CONDON 

and  the  sea.  It  might  have  been  there  from  the 
beginning,  rising  on  rock  against  the  pale  salt 
day.  They  can  go  to  hell  in  Hesperia." 

Still  Linda's  hurt  persisted;  she  saw  the  un 
fortunate  occurrence  as  a  direct  blow  at  her  pride. 
Arnaud,  too,  failed  her;  he  was  splendid  in  his 
assault  upon  such  rapacious  stupidity ;  but  it  was 
only  an  impersonal  concern.  His  manner  ex 
pressed  the  conviction  that  it  might  have  been  ex 
pected.  He  was  blind  to  her  special  enthusiasm, 
her  long  intimate  connection  with  the  statue. 
Exasperated  she  almost  told  him  that  it  was  more 
real  to  her  than  their  house,  than  Vigne  and 
Lowrie,  than  he.  She  was  stopped,  fortunately, 
by  the  perception  that,  amazingly,  the  statue  was 
more  actual  than  Dodge  Pleydon.  It  touched  the 
center  of  her  life  more  nearly. 

Why,  she  didn't  know. 

If  her  mental  confusion  increased  by  as  much 
as  a  feeling,  Linda  thought,  she  would  be  close 
to  madness.  It  was  unbearable  at  practically 
forty. 

Lowrie  said,  at  the  worst  possible  moment, 
that  he  found  the  entire  episode  ridiculously  over 
emphasized.  A  statue  more  or  less  was  of  small 
[254] 


LINDA    CONDON 

importance.  If  the  Downige  family  were  upset 
why  didn't  they  employ  an  able  lawyer  to  dis 
pose  of  it?  There  were  many  ways  for  such  a 
proceeding — 

"I  have  no  desire  to  hear  them,"  she  interrupted. 
"You  seem  to  know  a  tremendous  lot,  but  what 
good  it  will  do  you  in  the  end  who  can  say! 
And,  with  all  your  cleverness,  you  haven't  an 
ounce  of  appreciation  for  art.  Besides,  I  hate  to 
see  any  one  as  young  as  you  so  sure  of  himself. 
Often  I  suspect  you  are  patronizing  your  father 
and  me.  It's  not  pretty  nor  polite." 

Lowrie  was  obviously  embarrassed  by  her  at 
tack,  and  managed  the  abrupt  semblance  of  an 
apology.  Arnaud,  who  had  put  down  his  eternal 
book,  said  nothing  until  the  boy  had  vanished. 
"Wasn't  that  rather  sharp?"  he  asked  mildly. 
"Perhaps,"  she  replied  in  a  tone  without  warmth 
or  regret.  "Somehow  I  am  never  comfortable 
with  Lowrie." 

"You  are  too  much  alike,"  he  shrewdly  ob 
served.  "It  is  laughable  at  times.  Did  you 
expect  your  children  to  be  fountains  of  senti 
ment?  And,  look  here — if  I  can  get  along  in 
comfort  with  you  for  life  you  in  particular  ought 
[255] 


LINDA   CONDON 

to  put  up  peacefully  with  Lowrie.  He  is  a 
damned  sight  more  human  than,  at  bottom,  you 
are;  a  woman  of  alabaster." 

"I  loathe  quarrels,"  she  admitted;  "they  are  so 
vulgar.  You  know  that  they  are  not  like  me  and 
just  said  so.  Oh,  Arnaud,  why  does  life  get 
harder  instead  of  easier?" 

He  put  his  book  aside  completely  and  gazed  at 
her  in  patient  thought.  "Linda,"  he  said  finally, 
"I  have  never  heard  anything  that  stirred  me  so 
much;  not  what  you  said,  my  dear,  but  the  recog 
nition  in  your  voice."  A  wistfulness  of  love  for 
her  enveloped  him ;  an  ineffable  desire  as  vain  as 
the  passion  she  struggled  to  give  him  in  return. 
She  smiled  in  an  unhappiness  of  apology. 

"Perhaps — "  he  stopped,  waiting  any  assur 
ance  whatever,  his  face  eager  like  a  dusty  lamp 
in  which  the  light  had  been  turned  sharply  up. 
She  was  unable  to  stir,  to  move  her  gaze  from  his 
hopeful  eyes,  to  mitigate  by  a  breath  her  slender 
white  aloofness.  A  smile  different  from  hers, 
tender  with  remission,  lingered  in  his  fading  ir 
radiation.  The  dusk  was  gathering,  adding  its 
melancholy  to  his  age — sixty-five  now.  Why 
that  was  an  old  man!  Her  sympathy  vanished 
in  her  shrinking  from1  the  twilight  that  was,  as 
[256] 


LINDA    CONDON 

well,  slowly,  inevitably,  deepening  about  her. 
/  It  was  laughable  that,  as  she  approached  an 
age  whose  only  resource  was  tranquillity,  she 
grew  more  restless.  Her  present  vague  agitation 
belonged  ridiculously  to  youth.  The  philosophy 
of  the  evident  that  had  supported  her  so  firmly 
was  breaking  at  the  most  inopportune  time,  j  And 
it  was,  she  told  herself,  too  late  for  anything  new ; 
the  years  for  that  had  been  spent  insensibly  with 
Arnaud.  Linda  was  very  angry  with  herself,  for, 
in  all  her  shifting  state  of  mind,  she  preserved 
an  inner  necessity  for  the  quality  of  exactness  ex 
pressed  in  her  clothes.  There  were  literally  no 
neglected  spaces  in  her  conscious  living. 

Her  thoughts  finally  centered  about  the  statue 
in  Hesperia — it  presented  an  actual  mark  for  her 
fleeting  resentments.  She  wondered  why  it  so 
largely  occupied  her  thoughts,  moved  her  so  per 
sonally.  She  watched  the  papers  for  the  scat 
tered  reports  of  the  progress  of  the  contention  it 
had  roused,  some  ill-natured,  others  supposedly 
humorous,  and  nearly  all  uninformed.  She  be 
came,  Arnaud  said,  the  champion  of  the  esthetic 
against  Dagon.  He  elaborated  this  picture  until 
she  was  forced  to  smile  against  her  inclination, 
her  profound  seriousness.  Linda  had  the  feel- 
[257] 


LINDA   CONDON 

ing  that  she,  too,  was  on  the  pedestal  that  held 
the  bronze  effigy  of  Simon  Downige  challenging 
the  fog  that  obscured  men.  Its  fate  was  hers. 
She  didn't  pretend  to  explain  how. 

As  time  passed  it  seemed  to  her  that  it  took  her 
longer  and  longer  to  dress  in  the  morning,  while 
her  preparations  couldn't  be  simpler;  her  habit 
of  deliberation  had  become  nearly  a  vice,  the 
precision  of  her  ruffles,  her  hair,  a  tyranny.  She 
never  quite  lost  the  satisfaction  of  her  mirror's 
faultless  reflection;  and  stopped,  now,  for  a  mo 
ment's  calm  interrogation  of  the  being — hardly 
more  silvery  cool  than  the  reality — before  her. 

Arnaud  was  at  the  table,  and  the  gaze  with 
which  he  met  her  was  troubled.  The  morning 
paper,  she  saw,  was,  against  custom,  at  her  place, 
and  she  picked  it  up  with  an  instinctive  sense 
of  calamity.  The  blackly  printed  sensational 
headline  that  immediately  established  her  fear 
sank  vivid  and  entire  into  her  brain:  an  anony 
mous  inflamed  mob  in  Hesperia  had  pulled  down 
and  destroyed  Pleydon's  statue.  Their  act  was 
described  as  a  tribute  to  the  liberality  of  the 
present  Downige  family  in  the  light  of  its  objec 
tion  to  the  monument. 

As  if  in  the  development  of  her  feeling  Linda 
[258] 


LINDA    CONDON 

had  a  sensation  of  crashing  with  a  sickening  vio 
lence  from  a  pedestal  to  the  ground.  Actually,  it 
seemed,  the  catastrophe  had  happened  to  her. 
She  heard,  with  a  sense  of  inutility,  Arnaud  de 
nouncing  the  outrage ;  he  had  a  pencil  in  his  hand 
for  the  composition  of  a  telegram  to  Dodge.  He 
paid — but  perhaps  only  naturally — no  attention 
to  her,  suffering  dully  from  her  fall.  She  shud 
dered  before  the  recreated  lawless  approaching 
voice  of  the  mob;  the  naked  ugly  violence  froze 
her  with  terror;  she  felt  the  gross  hurried  hands 
winding  ropes  about  her,  the  rending  brutality 
of  force — 

She  sat  and  automatically  took  a  small  carved 
glass  of  orange-juice  from  a  bed  of  ice,  and  her 
chilled  fingers  recalled  a  dim  image  of  her  mother. 
Arnaud  was  speaking,  "I'm  afraid  this  will  cut 
through  Pleydon's  security,  it  was  such  a  wanton 
destruction  of  his  unique  power.  You  see,  he 
worked  lovingly  over  the  cast  with  little  files 
and  countless  finite  improvements.  The  mold,  I 
think,  was  broken.  What  a  piece  of  luck  the 
thing's  at  Cottarsport."  He  paused,  obviously 
expecting  her  to  comment;  but  suddenly  phrases 
failed  her. 

In  place  of  herself  she  should  be  considering 
[259] 


LINDA    CONDON 

Dodge;  her  sympathy  even  for  him  was  sub 
merged  in  her  own  extraordinary  injury.  How 
ever,  she  recovered  from  her  first  gasping  shock, 
and  made  an  utterly  commonplace  remark. 
Never  had  her  sense  of  isolation  been  stronger. 
"I  must  admit/'  her  husband  continued,  "that 
I  looked  for  some  small  display  of  concern.  I 
give  you  my  word  there  are  moments  when  I 
think  Pleydon  himself  cut  you  out  of  stone.  He 
isn't  great  enough  for  that,  though;  in  the  way 
of  perfection  you  successfully  gild  the  lily.  A 
thing  held  to  be  impossible." 

Linda  told  him  with  amazing  inanity  that  his 
opinion  of  her  was  unreliable;  and,  contented, 
he  lightly  pursued  his  admiration  of  what  he 
called  her  boreal  charm.  At  intervals  she  re 
sponded  appropriately  and  proceeded  with  break 
fast.  She  had  entered  a  region  of  dispassionate 
consideration,  her  characteristic  detachment,  she 
thought,  regained.  She  mentally,  calmly,  recon 
structed  the  motives  and  events  that  had  led  to  the 
destruction  of  the  statue;  they,  at  least,  were  evi 
dent  to  her.  She  reaffirmed  silently  her  convic 
tion  that  it  had  resulted  from  the  stupidity,  the 
vanity,  of  a  woman.  The  limitations  of  men, 
fully  as  narrow,  operated  in  other  directions. 
[260] 


LINDA   CONDON 

Then,  with  an  incredulous  surprise,  she  was 
aware  that  the  clear  space  of  her  reason  was 
filling  with  anger.  Never  before  had  such  a 
flood  of  emotion  possessed  her;  and  she  sur 
rendered  herself,  in  an  enormous  relief,  to  the 
novelty  of  its  obliterating  tide.  It  deepened  im 
measurably,  sweeping  her  far  from  the  security 
of  old  positions  of  indifference  and  critical  self- 
possession.  Linda  became  enraged  at  a  world 
that  had  concentrated  all  its  degraded  vulgarity  in 
one  unspeakable  act. 


[261] 


XXXVII 

IT  was  fall,  October,  and  the  day  was  a 
space  of  pale  gold  foliage  wreathed  in  blue 
garlands  of  mist.  The  gardener  was  busy 
with  a  wooden  rake  and  wheelbarrow  in  which  he 
carted  away  dead  leaves  for  burning.  The  fire 
was  back  of  the  low  fence,  in  the  rear,  and  Linda, 
at  the  dining-room  window,  could  hear  the  fierce 
small  crackle  of  flames;  the  drifting  pungent 
smoke  was  like  a  faint  breath  of  ammonia. 
Arnaud  had  left  for  the  day,  Lowrie  was  at  the 
university,  while  Vigne  and  her  husband — mov 
ing  toward  their  ultimate  colonial  threshold — had 
taken  a  small  house.  She  was  alone. 

As  usual. 

However,  in  her  present  state  her  solitude  had 
lost  its  inevitability;  she  failed  to  see  why  it  must 
continue  until  the  end  of  time.  She  could  no 
longer  discover  a  sufficient  reason  for  her  limit 
less  endurance,  her  placid  acceptance  of  all  that 
chance,  or  any  inconsiderable  person,  happened 
to  dictate.  She  wasn't  like  that  in  the  least. 
[262] 


LINDA    CONDON 

Her  temper  had  solidified  as  though  it  were  ice, 
taking  everywhere  the  form  in  which  it  was  held. 
It  was  a  reality.  She  determined,  as  well,  that 
her  feeling  should  not  melt  back  into  the  familiar 
acceptance  of  a  routine  that  had  led  her  blind 
folded  across  such  an  extent  of  life. 

She  understood  now,  in  a  large  part,  her  dis 
turbance  at  the  indignity  to  Dodge's  monument — 
he  had  assured  her  that  she  was  its  inspiration; 
except  for  her  it  would  never  have  been  realized, 
he  would  have  kept  on  modeling  those  Newport 
fountains,  continued  with  the  Susanna  Nodas, 
spending  himself,  ignobly.  He  loved  her,  and 
that  love  had  resulted  in  a  statue  the  world  of 
art,  of  taste,  honored.  But  it  was  she  all  the 
while  they  were  approving,  discussing,  writing 
about,  Linda  Condon. 

She  had  always  been  that,  Pleydon  had  in 
formed  her,  never  Linda  Hallet — in  spite  of 
Arnaud  and  their  children.  It  sounded  like 
nonsense;  but,  at  the  bottom,  it  was  truth.  Of 
course  it  couldn't  be  explained,  for  example,  to 
the  man  who  had  every  right,  every  evidence,  to 
consider  himself  her  husband.  Nothing  was 
susceptible  of  explanation.  Absolutely  nothing! 
There  was  the  earth,  which  appeared  to  be  every- 
[263] 


LINDA   CONDON 

thing,  the  houses  you  entered,  the  streets  you 
passed  over,  the  people  among  whom  you  lived, 
yet  that  wasn't  all.  Heavens,  no!  It  was  quite 
unimportant  compared  with — with  other  facts 
latent  in  the  mind  and  blood. 

Dodge  Pleydon's  love  was  one  of  those  other 
facts;  it  was  simply  impossible  to  deny  its  ex 
istence,  its  power.  Dodge  had  been  totally 
changed  by  it,  born  over  again.  But  she,  who 
had  been  the  source,  had  had  no  good  from  it, 
nothing  except  the  thrill  that  had  always  been 
hers.  No  one  knew  of  it,  counted  it  as  her 
achievement,  paid  the  slightest  attention  to  her. 
Arnaud  smiled  indulgently,  Lowrie  scoffed. 
When  the  statue  had  been  thrown  down  they 
thought  of  it  merely  as  a  deplorable  part  of  the 
day's  news.  They  hadn't  seen  that  she,  Linda 
Condon,  was  unspeakably  insulted. 

She  doubted  if  she  could  bring  them  to  com 
prehend  what  had  happened — to  her.  Or  if 
Arnaud  understood,  if  she  made  it  plain,  what 
good  would  be  done!  That  wouldn't  save  her, 
put  her  back  again  on  the  pedestal.  The  latter 
was  necessary.  Linda  recognized  that  a  great 
deal  of  her  feeling  was  based  on  pride;  but  it 
was  a  pride  entirely  justified.  She  had  no  in- 
[264] 


LINDA   CONDON 

tention  of  submitting  to  the  coarse  hands  and 
ropes  of  public  affront.  Throughout  her  life  she 
had  rebelled  against  any  profanation  of  her  per 
son,  she  had  hated  to  be  touched. 

Every  instinct,  she  found,  every  delicate  self- 
opinion,  was  bound  into  Pleydon's  success;  the 
latter  had  kept  her  alive.  Without  it  existence 
would  have  been  intolerable.  It  was  unbearable 
now. 

She  discharged  the  small  daily  duties  of  her 
efficient  housekeeping  with  a  contemptuous  ex 
actness;  for  years  she  had  accomplished,  in  her 
self,  nothing  more.  But  at  last  a  break  had 
come.  Linda  recognized  this  without  any 
knowledge  of  what  reparation  it  would  find.  She 
wasn't  concerned  with  that,  a  small  detail.  It 
would  be  apparent.  Arnaud  was  silent  through 
dinner;  tired,  it  seemed.  She  saw  him  as  if  at 
the  distant  end  of  a  dull  corridor — as  she  looked 
back.  There  was  no  change  in  her  liking  for 
him.  Mechanically  she  noticed  the  disorder  of 
his  scant  hair  and  rumpled  sleeves. 

Not  until,  waking  sharply,  in  the  middle  of 

the  night,  did  she  have  a  glimpse  of  a  possible 

course — she  might  live  with  Dodge  and  perfectly 

express  both  her  retaliation  and  her  accomplish- 

[265] 


LINDA    CONDON 

ment.  In  that  way  she  would  reestablish  herself 
beside  him  and  place  their  vision  in  bronze  on  an 
elevation  beyond  the  spite  of  the  envious  and  the 
blind. 

It  was  so  directly  simple  that  she  was  surprised 
it  hadn't  occurred  to  her  before.  The  possibility 
had  always  been  a  part,  unsuspected  and  valuable, 
of  her  special  being;  the  largely  condemned  faults 
of  her  character  and  experience  had  at  least 
brought  her  this — a  not  inconsiderable  freedom 
in  a  world  everywhere  barred  by  the  necessity  for 
upholding  a  hypocritical  show  of  superiority  to 
honest  desire.  The  detachment  that  deprived 
her  of  life's  conventional  joys  released  her  from 
its  common  obligations.  That  conviction,  how 
ever,  was  too  intimately  connected  with  all  her 
inheritance  to  bring  her  any  conscious  dramatic 
sense  of  rebellion  or  high  feeling  of  justified  in 
dignation. 

Sleep  had  deserted  her,  and  she  waited  for  the 
dawn  in  the  windows  that  would  bring  her  es 
cape.  It  was  very  slow  coming;  the  blackness 
took  on  a  grayer  tone,  like  ink  with  added  faint 
infusions  of  water.  Slowly  the  blackness  dis 
solved  and  she  heard  the  stir  of  the  sparrows 
in  the  ivy.  There  was  the  passing  rumble  of 
[266] 


LINDA    CONDON 

an  early  electric  car  on  the  paved  aged  street, 
the  blurred  hurried  shuffle  of  a  workman's  clumsy 
shoes.  The  brightening  morning  was  cool  with 
a  premonitory  touch  of  frost;  at  the  window  she 
saw  a  vanishing  silver  sheen  on  the  lawn  and 
board  fence. 

A  sensation  of  youth  pervaded  her;  and  while, 
perhaps,  it  was  out  of  keeping  with  her  years, 
she  had  still  her  vitality  unspent ;  she  was  without 
a  trace  of  the  momentary  frost  on  the  grass.  She 
was  tranquil,  leisurely;  her  heart  evenly  sent  its 
life  through  her  unflushed  body.  Piece  by  piece 
she  put  on  her  web-like  garments,  black  and 
white;  brushing  the  heavy  stream  of  her  hair 
and  tying  the  inevitable  sash  about  her  supple 
waist. 

Below  she  met  Arnaud  with  an  unpleasant 
shock — she  hadn't  given  him  a  thought.  Her 
feeling  now  was  hardly  more  than  annoyance  at 
her  forgetfulness.  He  would  be  terribly  dis 
tressed  at  her  going,  and  she  was  genuinely  sorry 
for  this,  poised  at  the  edge  of  an  explanation  of 
her  purpose.  Arnaud  was  putting  butter  and 
salt  into  his  egg-cup,  after  that  he  would  grind 
the  pepper  from  a  French  mill — pure  spices  were 
a  precision  of  his — and  she  waited  until  the  op 
eration  was  completed. 

[267] 


LINDA    CONDON 

Then  it  occurred  to  her  that  all  she  could  hope 
to  accomplish  by  admitting  her  intention  was 
the  ruin  of  his  last  hour  alone  with  her.  He  was 
happier,  gayer,  than  usual.  But  his  age  was 
evident  in  his  voice,  his  gestures.  Linda 
marveled  at  her  coldness,  her  ruthless  disregard 
of  Arnaud's  claim  on  her,  of  his  affection  as  deep 
as  Pleydon's,  perhaps  no  less  fine  but  not  so 
imperative.  Yet  Arnaud  had  had  over  twenty 
years  of  her  life,  the  best;  and  she  had  never  de 
ceived  him  about  the  quality  of  her  gift.  It  was 
right,  now,  for  Dodge  to  have  the  remainder. 
But  whether  it  were  right  or  wrong,  there  was  no 
failure  of  her  determination  to  go  to  Pleydon  in 
the  vindication  of  her  existence. 

She  delayed  speaking  to  Arnaud  until,  sud 
denly,  breakfast  was  over.  He  seldom  went  to 
the  law  office  where  he  had  been  a  partner,  but 
stayed  about  the  lower  floor  of  his  house,  in  the 
library  or  directing  small  outside  undertakings. 
Either  that  or  he  left,  late,  for  the  Historical  So 
ciety,  with  which  his  connection  and  interest 
were  uninterrupted.  As  Linda  passed  him  in  the 
hall  he  was  fumbling  in  the  green  bag  that  ac 
companied  all  his  journeyings  into  the  city;  and 
she  gathered  that  he  intended  to  make  one  of  his 
[268] 


LINDA   CONDON 

occasional  sallies.  She  proceeded  above,  to  her 
room,  where  with  steady  hands  she  pinned  on  her 
hat.  It  would  be  impossible  to  take  any  addi 
tional  clothes,  and  she'd  have  to  content  herself 
with  something  ready-made  until  she  could  order 
others  in  the  establishment  of  her  living  with 
Dodge.  Her  close-fitting  jacket,  gloves,  and  a 
short  cape  of  sables  were  collected;  she  gazed 
finally,  thoughtfully,  about  the  room,  and  then, 
with  a  subdued  whisper  of  skirts,  descended  the 
stair.  Arnaud  was  in  the  library,  bending  over 
the  table  that  bore  his  accumulation  of  papers  and 
serious  journals.  A  lingering  impulse  to  speak 
was  overborne  by  the  memory  of  what,  lately,  she 
had  endured — she  saw  him  at  the  dusty  end  of 
that  long  corridor  through  which  she  had  monoto 
nously  journeyed,  denied  of  her  one  triumph, 
lost  in  inconsequential  shadows — and  she  con 
tinued  firmly  to  the  door  which  closed  behind  her 
with  a  normal  mute  smoothness,  an  inanimate 
silence. 


[269] 


XXXVIII 

THE  maid  who  admitted  Linda  to  Pley- 
don's  apartment,  first  replying,  "Yes, 
Mrs.  Hallet.  No,  Mrs.  Hallet,"  to  her 
questions,  continued  in  fuller  sentences  express 
ing  a  triumph  of  sympathy  over  mere  correctness. 
She  lingered  at  the  door  of  the  informal  drawing- 
room,  imparting  the  information  that  Mr.  Pley- 
don  had  become  very  irregular  indeed  about  his 
meals,  and  that  his  return  for  lunch  was  uncertain. 
Something,  however,  would  be  prepared  for  her. 
Linda  acknowledged  this  briefly.  Often,  with 
Mr.  Pleydon  at  home,  he  wouldn't  so  much  as 
look  at  his  dinner.  Times,  too,  it  seemed  as 
though  he  had  been  in  the  studio  all  night.  He 
went  out  but  seldom  now,  and  rarely  remained 
away  for  more  than  an  hour  or  two.  Linda  heard 
this  without  an  indication  of  responsive  interest, 
and  the  servant,  returning  abruptly  from  the  ex 
cursion  into  humanity,  disappeared. 

She  was  glad  to  have  this  opportunity  alone  to 
accustom  herself  to  a  novel  position.     But  she 
[270] 


LINDA    CONDON 

was  once  more  annoyingly  calm.  Annoyingly, 
she  reiterated;  the  fervor  of  her  anger,  which  at 
the  same  time  had  been  bitterly  cold,  had  lessened. 
She  was  practically  normal.  She  regarded  this, 
the  loss  of  her  unprecedented  emotion,  in  the 
light  of  a  fraud  on  her  sanguine  decision.  Linda 
had  counted  on  its  support,  its  generous  irre 
sistible  tide,  to  carry  her  through  the  remainder 
of  her  life  with  the  exhilaration  she  had  so  largely 
missed. 

Here  in  Dodge's  room  she  was  as  placid,  al 
most,  as  though  she  were  in  the  library  at  home. 
That  customary  term  took  its  place  in  her  thoughts 
before  she  recognized  that,  with  her,  it  had  shifted. 
However,  it  was  unimportant — home  had  never 
been  a  magical  word  to  her;  it  belonged  in  the 
vast  category  which,  of  such  universal  weight, 
left  her  unstirred.  She  resembled  those  Eastern 
people  restlessly  and  perpetually  moving  across 
sandy  deserts  as  they  exhausted,  one  after  an 
other,  widely  separated  scanty  oases. 

She  studied  the  objects  around  her  with  the 
pleased  recognition  that  they  were  unique,  val 
uable,  and  in  faultless  taste.  Then  she  fell  to 
wondering  at  the  difference  had  Dodge  been  poor: 
she  would  have  come  to  him,  Linda  knew,  just 
[271] 


LINDA    CONDON 

the  same.  But,  she  admitted  frankly,  it  would 
have  been  uncomfortable.  Perhaps  that — actual 
poverty,  actual  deprivation — was  what  her  char 
acter  needed.  A  popular  sentiment  upheld  such 
a  view;  she  decided  it  was  without  foundation. 
There  was  no  reason  why  beauty,  finely  appro 
priate  surroundings,  should  damage  the  spirit. 

Her  mind  turned  to  an  examination  of  her 
desertion  of  Arnaud,  but  she  could  find  no  trace 
of  conventional  regret;  of  what,  she  felt,  her  sen 
sation  ought  to  be.  The  instinctive  revolt  from 
oblivion  was  an  infinitely  stronger  reality  than 
any  allegiance  to  abstract  duty.  She  was  con 
sumed  by  the  passionate  need  to  preserve  the  in 
tegrity  of  being  herself.  The  word  selfish  oc 
curred  to  her  but  to  be  met  unabashed  by  the 
query,  why  not?  Selfishness  was  a  reproach  ap 
plied  by  those  who  failed  to  get  what  they  wanted 
to  all  who  succeeded.  Linda  wasn't  afraid  of 
public  opinion,  censure;  she  didn't  shrink  even 
from  the  injury  to  her  husband.  What  Dodge 
would  think,  however,  was  hidden  from  her. 

She  had  no  doubt  of  his  complete  acceptance 
of  all  she  offered;  ordinary  obligations  to  so 
ciety  bound  him  as  little  as  they  held  her.  It 
would  be  enough  that  she  wanted  to  come  to  him. 
[272] 


LINDA   CONDON 

She  would  bother  him,  change  his  habit  of  living, 
very  little.  Long  years  of  loneliness  had  taught 
her  to  be  self-sufficient.  Linda  would  be  too  wise 
to  insist  on  distasteful  regularity  in  the  interest 
of  a  comparatively  unimportant  well-being.  In 
short,  she  wouldn't  bother  him.  That  must  be 
made  clear  at  once. 

More  than  anything  else  he  would  be  inex 
pressibly  delighted  to  have  her  with  him,  to  find 
— at  last — his  love.  Little  intimacies  of  satin 
mules,  glimpses,  charming  to  an  artist!  He'd 
be  faultless,  too,  in  the  relationships  where  Arnaud 
as  well  had  never  for  a  moment  deviated  from 
beautiful  consideration.  Two  remarkable  men. 
While  her  deficiency  in  humor  was  admitted,  she 
saw  a  glimmer  of  the  absurd  in  her  attitude  and 
present  situation.  The  combination,  at  least, 
was  uncommon.  There  had  been  no  change  in 
her  feeling  for  either  Arnaud  or  Dodge,  their 
places  in  her  being  were  undisturbed;  she  liked 
her  husband  no  less,  Dodge  no  better. 

Lunch  was  announced,  a  small  ceremony  of 
covered  silver  dishes,  heavy  crystal,  Nankin 
china,  and  flowers.  The  linen,  which  was  old, 
bore  a  monogram  unfamiliar  to  her — that  of 
Dodge's  mother,  probably.  When  she  had 
[273] 


LINDA    CONDON 

finished,  but  was  still  lingering  at  the  narrow 
refectory  table,  she  heard  Pleydon  enter  the  hall 
and  the  explanatory  voice  of  the  servant.  An 
unexpected  embarrassment  pervaded  her,  but  she 
overcame  it  by  the  realization  that  there  was  no 
need  for  an  immediate  announcement  of  her  pur 
pose.  Dodge  would  naturally  suppose  that  she 
was  in  New  York  shopping. 

He  did,  to  her  intense  relief,  with  a  moving 
pleasure  that  she  had  lunched  with  him.  "It's 
seldom,"  he  went  on,  "that  you  are  so  sensible. 
I  hope  you  haven't  any  plans  or  concerts  to  drag 
you  away  immediately.  I  owe  you  a  million 
strawberries;  but,  aside  from  that,  I'd  like  you  to 
stay  as  long  as  possible." 

"Very  well,"  she  replied  quietly;  "I  will." 

She  hadn't  seen  him  since  the  statue  at  Hes- 
peria  had  been  destroyed,  and  she  tried  faintly 
to  tell  him  how  much  that  outrage  had  hurt  her. 
It  had  injured  him  too,  she  realized;  just  as 
Arnaud  predicted.  He  showed  his  age  more 
gauntly,  more  absolutely,  than  the  other.  His 
skin  was  dry  as  though  the  vitality  of  his  coun 
tenance  had  been  burned  out  by  the  flame  visible 
in  his  eyes. 

"The  drunken  fools! "  he  exclaimed  of  the  mob 
[274] 


LINDA    CONDON 

that  had  torn  Simon  Downige  from  his  eminence; 
"they  came  by  way  of  all  the  saloons  in  the  city. 
Free  drinks !  That  is  the  disturbing  thing  about 
what  the  optimistic  call  civilization — the  fact  that 
it  is  always  at  the  mercy  of  the  ignorant  and  the 
brutal.  There  is  no  security;  none,  that  is,  ex 
cept  in  the  individual  spirit.  And  they,  mostly, 
are  the  victims  of  a  singular  insane  resentment — 
Savonarola  and  there  were  greater. 

"But  you  mustn't  think,  you  mustn't  suppose, 
that  I  mean  it's  hopeless.  How  could  I?  Who 
has  had  more  from  living?  Love  and  complete 
self-expression.  That  exhausts  every  possibility. 
Three  words.  Remember  Cottarsport.  But  the 
love — ah,"  he  smiled,  but  not  directly  at  her. 
Linda  was  at  once  reassured  and  disturbed;  and 
she  rose,  proceeding  into  the  drawing-room. 

There  she  sat  gracefully  composed  and  with 
still  hands;  she  never  embroidered  or  employed 
her  leisure  with  trivial  useful  tasks.  Pleydon 
was  extended  on  a  chair,  his  fingers  caught  be 
yond  his  head  and  his  long  legs  thrust  out  and 
crossed  at  the  ankles.  His  gaze  was  fixed  on  her 
unwaveringly;  and  yet,  when  she  tried  to  meet 
its  focus,  it  went  behind  her  as  though  it  pierced 
the  solidity  of  her  body  and  the  walls  in  the  con- 
[275] 


LINDA   CONDON 

templation  of  a  far-removed  shining  image.  Her 
disturbance  grew  to  the  inclusion  of  a  degree  of 
fretfulness  at  his  unbroken  silence,  his  apparent 
absorption  in  whatever  his  meditation  projected 
or  found. 


[276] 


XXXIX 

NOW,  she  decided,  was  the  moment  for  her 
revelation;   or  rather,  it  couldn't  very 
well  be  further  deferred,  for  it  promised 
to  be  halting.     But,  with  her  lips  forming  the 
words,  he  abruptly  spoke: 

"I  have  lived  so  long  with  your  spirit,  it 
has  become  so  familiar — I  mean  the  ability  of 
completely  making  you  out  of  my  heart — that 
when  you  are  here  the  difference  isn't  staggering. 
You  see,  you  are  never  away.  I  have  that  ability; 
it  came  out  of  the  other  wreck.  But  you  know 
about  it — from  years  back.  Time  has  only  man 
aged  a  greater  power.  Lately,  and  I  have  noth 
ing  to  do  with  it,  I  have  been  seeing  you  again 
as  a  girl;  as  young  as  at  Markue's  party; 
younger.  Not  more  than  ten.  I  don't  mean  that 
there  is  anything — isn't  the  present  fashion 
able  word  subliminal? — esoteric.  God  forbid. 
You'll  remember  my  hatred  of  that  brutal  decep 
tion. 

[277] 


LINDA   CONDON 

"No,  it's  only  a  part  of  my  ability  to  create  the 
shape  of  feeling,  of  Simon's  hope.  I  see  things 
as  realities  capable  of  exact  statement;  and, 
naturally,  more  than  all  the  rest,  you  come  to 
me  that  way.  But  as  a  child — who  knows  why?" 
he  relinquished  the  answer  with  an  opened  palm. 
"And  young  like  that,  perhaps  ten,  I  love  you 
more  sharply,  more  unutterably,  than  at  any  other 
age.  What  is  it  I  love?  Not  your  adorable 
plastic  body,  not  that.  It  isn't  necessary  to 
understand. 

"You  have,  as  a  child,  a  quality  of  blinding 
loveliness  in  a  world  I  absolutely  distrust.  An 
Elysian  flower.  Is  it  possible,  do  you  suppose, 
to  worship  an  abstract  idea?  It's  not  important 
to  insist  on  my  sanity." 

The  question  of  that  had  occurred  independ 
ently  to  Linda;  his  hurried  voice  and  lost  gaze 
filled  her  with  apprehension.  A  dull  reddish 
patch,  she  saw,  burned  in  either  thin  cheek;  and 
she  told  herself  that  the  fever  had  revived  in  him. 
Pleyd-on  continued: 

"Yet  it  is  a  timeless  vision,  because  you  never 

get  old.     I  see  Hallet  failing  year  by  year,  and 

your  children,  only  yesterday  dabs  of  soft  flesh, 

grow  up  and  pass  through  college  and  marry.     I 

[278] 


LINDA   CONDON 

hear  myself  in  the  studio  with  an  old  man's 
cough ;  the  chisels  slip  under  the  mall  and  I  can't 
move  the  clay  about  without  help — all  fading, 
decaying,  but  you.  Candles  burn  out,  hundreds 
of  them,  while  your  whiteness,  your  flame — 

"Strange,  too,  how  you  light  a  world,  a  sky, 
eternity.  A  word  we  have  no  business  with;  a 
high-sounding  word  for  a  penny  purpose.  Look, 
we  try  to  keep  alive  because  it's  necessary  to 
life,  to  nature;  and  the  effort,  the  struggle, 
breeds  the  dream.  You  can  understand  that. 
Men  who  ought  to  know  say  that  love  is  nothing 
more."  He  rose  and  stood  over  her,  towering 
and  portentous  against  the  curtained  light.  "I 
don't  pretend  to  guess.  I'm  a  creative  artist — 
Simon  Downige  at  Cottarsport — I  have  you.  If 
it's  God  so  much  the  better." 

What  principally  swept  over  Linda  was  the 
knowledge  that  his  possession  of  her  must  keep 
them  always  apart.  The  reality,  all  realities, 
were  veils  to  Pleydon.  Her  momentary  vision  of 
things  beyond  brick  and  earth  was  magnified  in 
him  until  everything  else  was  obliterated.  The 
fever!  Oh,  yes,  that  and  his  passion  for  work 
merged  in  his  passion  for  her.  She  could  bring 
him  nothing;  and  she  had  a  curious  picture  of 
[279] 


LINDA   CONDON 

two  Lindas  visible  to  him  here — the  Linda  that 
was  actual  and  the  other,  the  child.  And  of  them 
it  was  the  latter  he  cared  most  for,  recreated  out 
of  his  desire  to  defraud  his  loneliness,  to  repay 
the  damage  to  his  spirit  realized  in  bronze. 

She  was,  suddenly,  too  weary  to  stir  or  lift  her 
hand;  a  depression  as  absolute  as  her  flare  of 
rage  enveloped  her.  Now  the  reason  for  her 
coming  seemed  inexplicable,  as  if,  for  the  while, 
her  mind  had  failed.  She  repressed  a  shudder 
at  the  thought  of  being,  through  the  long  nights 
of  his  restlessness  and  wandering  voice,  alone 
with  Pleydon.  She  hadn't,  Linda  discovered,  any 
of  the  transmuting  feeling  for  him  which  alone 
made  surrender  possible.  She  calculated  men 
tally  how  long  it  would  take  her  to  reach  the  sta 
tion,  what  train  would  be  available. 

Linda  accepted  dumbly  the  fatality  to  her  own 
hope;  for  a  few  hours  she  had  thought  it  possible 
to  break  out  of  the  prison  of  circumstance,  to  walk 
free  from  all  hindrance;  but  it  had  been  vain. 
She  gazed  at  Dodge  Pleydon  intensely — a  com 
prehensive  view  of  the  man  she  had  so  nearly  mar 
ried,  and  who,  more  than  any  other  force,  domi 
nated  her  being.  It  was  already  too  late  for 
anything  but  memory;  she  saw — filled  with  pity 
[280] 


LINDA   CONDON 

for  them  both — hardly  more  than  a  strange  old 
man  with  deadened  hair  and  a  yellow  parchment- 
like  skin.  His  suit  of  loose  gray  flannel  gave  her 
a  feeling  that  it  had  been  borrowed  from  some 
one  she  lovingly  knew.  The  gesture  of  his 
hand,  too,  had  been  copied  from  a  brilliant  per 
sonage  with  a  consuming  impatience  at  all  impo 
tence. 

"Remember  me  to  Arnaud,"  he  said,  holding 
her  gloves  and  the  short  fur  cape.  "Wait!" 
he  cried  sharply,  turning  to  the  bookcase  against 
the  wall.  Pleydon  fumbled  in  a  box  of  lacquered 
gilt  with  a  silk  cord  and  produced  a  glove  once 
white  but  now  brown  and  fragile  with  age. 
"You  never  missed  it,"  he  proceeded  in  a  gleeful 
triumph;  "but  then  you  had  so  many  pairs. 
Once  I  sent  you  nine  dozen  together  from  Gre 
noble.  They  were  nothing,  but  this  you  had 
worn.  For  a  long  while  it  kept  the  shape  of  your 
hand." 

"Dodge,"  she  tried  without  success  to  steady 
her  voice,  "it  stayed  with  you  anyhow,  my — my 
hand." 

"But  yes,"  he  answered  impatiently.  He  re 
turned  the  glove  to  its  box,  carefully  tying  the 
tasselled  cord.  Then,  after  clumsily  helping  her 
[281] 


LINDA   CONDON 

with  the  cape,  he  accompanied  her  to  the  elevator. 
"There  were  other  things,"  he  told  her.  "Did 
you  see  the  letters  about  the  Hesperia  affair? 
Heaps  of  them.  Rodin.  .  .  .  But  what  can 
you  expect  in  a  world  where  there  is  no  safety — " 
The  stopping  cage  cut  off  his  remark.  She  held 
out  the  hand  that  was  less  real  to  him  than  the 
dream. 

"Good-by,  Dodge." 

"Yes,  Linda.  But  watch  that  door,  your 
skirt  might  easily  be  caught  in  it."  He  fussed 
over  her  safety  until,  abruptly,  he  seemed  to  rise 
in  space,  shut  out  from  her  by  the  limitations  of 
her  faith. 

The  evening  overshadowed  her  in  the  train,  as 
though  she  were  whirling  in  the  swiftest  passage 
possible,  through  an  indeterminate  grayness,  from 
day  to  night.  The  latter  descended  on  her  as  she 
reached  the  steps  of  her  home.  It  was  still  that; 
now  it  would  continue  to  be  until  death.  Noth 
ing  could  ever  again  offer  her  change,  release, 
vindication;  nothing,  that  was,  which  might  give 
her,  for  a  day,  what  even  her  mother  had  plenti 
fully  experienced — the  igniting  exultation  of  the 
body. 

It  was  inevitable,  she  thought,  for  Arnaud  to  be 
[282] 


LINDA    CONDON 

in  the  library.  He  rose  unsteadily  as  she  stood 
in  the  doorway.  "Linda,"  he  articulated  with 
difficulty.  A  book  had  rested  open  on  the  table 
beside  him  and,  closing  it,  he  put  it  back  in  its 
place.  His  arm  trembled  so  that  it  took  a  pain 
fully  long  while.  Then  he  moved  fonvard,  still 
confused. 

"What  a  confounded  time  you  were  gone.  I 
had  the  most  idiotic  fancy.  You  see,  it  was  so 
unlike  you;  none  more  exact  in  habit.  All  day. 
I  didn't  get  to  the  Historical  Society,  it  seemed 
so  devilish  far  off.  I'd  never  blame  you  for 
leaving  an  old  man  without  any  gumption."  He 
must  never  think  that  again,  she  replied.  Wasn't 
she,  too,  middle-aged? 


[283] 


XL 

LINDA  admitted,  definitely,  the  loss  of  her 
youth;  and  yet  a  stubborn  inner  convic 
tion  remained  that  she  was  unchanged. 
In  this  she  had  for  support  her  appearance; 
practically  she  was  as  freshly  and  gracefully  pale 
as  the  girl  who  had  married  Arnaud  Hallet. 
Even  Vigne,  with  indelible  traces  of  her  mother 
hood,  had  faint  lines  absent  from  Linda's  flawless 
countenance.  Her  children,  and  Arnaud,  were 
immensely  proud  of  her  beauty;  it  had  become  a 
part — in  the  form  of  her  ridiculously  young  air — 
of  the  family  conversational  resources.  She  was 
increasingly  aware  of  its  supreme  significance  to 
her. 

One  of  her  few  certainties  had  been  the  discov 
ery  that,  while  small  truths  might  be  had  from 
others,  all  that  intimately  and  deeply  concerned 
her  was  beyond  questioning  and  advice.  The 
importance  of  her  attractiveness,  for  example, 
which  seemed  the  base  of  her  entire  being,  was 
completely  out  of  accord  with  the  accepted  stand- 
[284] 


LINDA   CONDON 

ard  of  values  for  middle-aged  women.  Other 
things,  called  moral  and  spiritual,  she  inferred, 
should  take  up  her  days  and  thoughts.  There 
was  a  course  of  discipline — exactly  like  exercises 
in  the  morning — for  the  preparation  of  the  will 
ingness  to  die. 

But  such  an  attitude  was  eternally  beyond  her ; 
she  repudiated  it  with  a  revolt  stringing  every 
nerve  indignantly  tense.  She  had  had,  on  the 
whole,  singularly  little  from  life  but  her  fine 
body;  it  had  always  been  the  temple  and  altar  of 
her  service,  and  no  mere  wordy  reassurance  could 
now  repay  her  for  its  swift  or  gradual  destruc 
tion.  The  latter,  except  for  accident,  would  be 
her  fate;  she  was  remarkably  sound.  In  her 
social  adventures,  the  balls  to  which,  without 
Arnaud,  she  occasionally  went,  she  was  morbid 
in  her  sensitive  dread  of  discovering,  through  a 
waning  admiration,  that  she  was  faded. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  spend  more  care  on 
her  person  than  she  had  in  the  past ;  but  that  was 
unrelenting.  Linda  was  inexorable  in  her  de 
mands  on  the  establishments  that  made  her  suits 
and  dresses.  The  slightest  imperfection  of  fit 
exasperated  her;  and  she  regarded  the  endless 
change  of  fashions  with  contempt.  This  same 
[285] 


LINDA    CONDON 

shifting,  she  observed,  occurred  not  only  in  wom 
en's  clothes  but  in  the  women  themselves. 

Linda  remembered  her  mother,  eternal  in 
gaiety,  but  very  obviously  different  from  her  in 
states  of  mind  affecting  her  appearance,  She 
was  unable  to  define  the  change;  but  it  was  un 
mistakable — Stella  Condon  seemed  a  little  old- 
fashioned.  When  now,  to  Lowrie's  wife,  Linda 
was  unmistakably  out-of-date.  Lowrie,  fast  ac 
complishing  all  that  had  been  predicted  for  him, 
had  married  a  girl  incomprehensible  to  his 
mother.  Observing  this  later  feminine  develop 
ment  she  had  the  baffled  feeling  of  inspecting  a 
creature  of  a  new  order. 

To  Linda,  Jean  Tynedale,  now  a  Hallet,  seemed 
harder  than  ever  her  own  famous  coldness  had 
succeeded  in  being.  This  came  mostly  from 
Jean's  imposing  education;  there  had  been,  in 
addition  to  the  politest  of  finishing  schools,  col 
lege — a  woman's  concern,  Bryn  Mawr — and  then 
post-graduate  honors  in  a  noteworthy  university. 
She  was  entirely  addressed,  in  a  concrete  way,  to 
the  abstract  problems  of  social  progress  and  hy 
giene;  and,  under  thirty,  the  animating  spirit,  as 
well  as  financial  support,  of  an  incredible  number 
of  Settlements  and  allied  undertakings.  She 
[286] 


LINDA    CONDON 

spoke  crisply  before  civic  and  other  clubs;  even, 
in  the  interest  of  suffrage,  addressing  nonde 
script  audiences  from  a  box  on  the  street. 

But  it  was  her  unperturbed  dissection  of  the 
motives  of  sex,  the  denouncement  of  a  criminal 
mysterious  ignorance,  that  most  daunted  Linda. 
She  listened  to  Jean  with  a  series  of  distinct 
shocks  to  her  sense  of  propriety.  What  she  had 
agreed  to  consider  a  nameless  attribute  of  women, 
or,  if  anything  more  exact,  the  power  of  their 
charm  over  men,  the  other  defined  in  unequivocal 
scientific  terms.  She  understood  every  impulse 
veiled  for  Linda  in  a  reticence  absolutely  needful 
to  its  appeal. 

This,  of  course,  the  elder  distrusted;  just  as 
she  had  no  approval  for  Jean's  public  activities. 
Linda  didn't  like  public  women;  her  every  in 
stinct  cried  for  a  fine  seclusion,  fine  in  the  mean 
ing  of  an  appropriate  setting  for  feminine  distinc 
tion,  the  magic  of  dress  and  cut  roses.  Her  pri 
vate  inelegant  word  for  Lowrie's  wife  was  "bold;" 
indeed,  describing  to  herself  the  younger  woman's 
patronage  of  her  bearing,  she  descended  to  her 
mother's  colloquialism  "brass." 

She  thought  this  sitting  at  a  dinner-table  which 
held  Vigne  and  her  husband  and  Lowrie  and  Jean 
[287] 


LINDA   CONDON 

Hallet./Arnaud,  drawing  life  from  the  vitality 
of  an  atmosphere  charged  with  youth,  jvas  un 
flagging  in  splendid  spirits  and  his  valorous  wit. 
Jean  would  never  inspire  the  affection  Arnaud 
had  given  her;  nor  the  passion  that,  in  Pleydon, 
had  burned  unfed  even  by  hope. 

Her  thoughts  slipped  away  from  the  present  to 
the  sculptor.  Three  years  had  vanished  since 
she  had  gone  with  an  intention  of  finality  to  his 
apartment,  and  in  that  time  he  had  neither  been 
in  their  house  nor  written.  Linda  had  expected 
this;  she  was  without  the  desire  to  see  or  hear 
from  him.  Dodge  Pleydon  was  finished  for  her ; 
as  a  man,  a  potentiality,  he  had  departed  from 
her  life.  He  was  a  piece  with  her  memories,  the 
triumphs  of  her  young  days.  Without  an  actual 
knowledge  of  the  moment  of  its  accomplishment 
she  had  passed  over  the  border  of  that  land,  leav 
ing  it  complete  and  fair  and  radiant  for  her  linger 
ing  view.  Whether  or  not  she  had  been  happy 
was  now  of  no  importance ;  the  magic  of  its  light 
showed  only  a  garden  and  a  girl  in  white  with  a 
black  bang  against  her  blue  eyes. 

The  bang,  the  blueness  of  gaze,  were  still  hers; 
but,  only  this  morning,  brush  in  hand,  the  former 
had  offered  less  resistance  in  its  arrangement;  it 
[288] 


LINDA   CONDON 

was  thinner,  and  the  color  perceptibly  not  so 
dense.  At  this,  with  a  chill  edge  of  fear,  she 
had  determined  to  go  at  once  to  her  hairdresser; 
no  one,  neither  Arnaud,  who  loved  its  luster,  nor 
an  unsympathetic  bold  scrutiny,  a  scrutiny  of 
brass,  should  see  that  she  was  getting  gray. 
There  was  no  fault  about  her  figure;  she  had  that 
for  her  satisfaction;  she  was  more  graceful  than 
Jean's  square  thinness,  more  slim  than  Vigne's 
maternal  presence. 

Linda  had  the  feeling  that  she  was  engaged  in 
a  struggle  with  time,  a  ruthless  antagonist  whom 
she  viewed  with  a  personal  enmity.  Time  must, 
would,  of  course,  triumph  in  the  end;  but  there 
would  be  no  sign  of  her  surrender  in  the  mean 
while;  she  wouldn't  bend  an  inch,  relinquish  by 
a  fraction  the  pride  and  delicacy  of  her  person. 
The  skilful  dyeing  of  her  hair  to  its  old  absolute 
blackness,  as  natural  and  becoming  in  appear 
ance  as  ever,  was  a  symbol  of  her  determination 
to  cheat  an  intolerable  tyranny. 

The  process,  dismaying  her  soul,  she  bore  with 
a  rigid  fortitude;  as  she  endured  the  coldness  of  a 
morning  bath  from  which,  often,  she  was  slow  to 
react.  This,  to  her,  was  widely  different  from 
the  futile  efforts  of  her  mother,  those  women  of 
[289] 


LINDA    CONDON 

the  past,  to  preserve  for  practical  ends  their 
flushes  of  youth  and  exhilaration.  She  felt  ob 
scurely  that  she  was  serving  a  deeper  reality 
created  by  the  hands  of  Pleydon,  Arnaud's  faith 
and  pure  pleasure,  all  that  countless  men  had 
seen  in  her  for  admiration,  solace  and  power, 

But  it  was  inevitable,  she  told  herself  bitterly, 
that  she  should  hear  the  first  intimation  of  her 
decline  from  Jean  Hallet.  Rather,  she  overheard 
it,  the  discussion  of  her,  from  the  loiterers  at 
breakfast  as  she  moved  about  the  communicating 
library.  Jean's  emphatic  slightly  rough-textured 
voice  arrested  her  in  the  arrangement  of  a  bowl  of 
zinnias: 

""""You  can't  say  just  where  she  has  failed,  but 
it's  evident.  Perhaps  a  general  dryness.  Per 
fectly  natural.  Thoroughly  silly  to  fight  against 
it-£5"  Vigne  interrupted  her.  "I  think  mother's 
wonderful.  I  can't  remember  any  other  woman 
nearly  her  age  who  looks  so  enchanting  in  the 
evening." 

Linda  quietly  left  the  flowers  as  they  were  and 
went  up  to  the  room  that  had  been  her  father's.  It 
was  now  used  as  a  spare  bedroom;  and  she  had 
turned  into  it,  in  place  of  her  own  chamber,  in 
stinctively,  without  reason.  She  had  kept  it  ex- 
[290] 


LINDA   CONDON 

actly  as  it  had  been  when  Amelia  Lowrie  first 
conducted  her  there,  as  it  was  when  her  father,  a 
boy,  slept  under  the  white  canopy. 

Linda  advanced  to  the  mirror;  and,  her  hands 
so  tightly  clenched  that  the  finger-nails  dug  into 
the  palms,  forced  herself  to  gaze  steadily  at  the 
wavering  reflection.  It  seemed  to  her  that  there 
had  been  a  malicious  magic  in  Jean's  detraction; 
for  immediately,  as  (though  the  harm  had  been 
wrought  by  the  girl's  voice,  she  saw  that  her  clear 
freshness  had  gone.  Her  face  had  a  wax-like 
quality,  the  violet  shadows  under  her  eyes  were 
brown.— 'Who  had  once  called  her  a  gardenia? 
Now  she  was  wilting — how  many  gardenias  had 
she  seen  droop,  turn  brown  Her  heart  beat  with 
a  disturbing  echo  in  her  ears,  and,  with  a  slight 
gasp  that  resembled  a  sob,  she  sank  on  one  of  the 
uncomfortable  painted  chairs. 

What,  above  every  other  sensation,  oppressed 
her  was  a  feeling  of  terrific  loneliness — the  fa 
miliar  isolation  magnified  until  it  was  past  bear 
ing.  Yet,  there  was  Arnaud,  infallible  in  his 
tender  comprehension,  she  ought  to  go  to  him  at 
once  and  find  support.  But  it  was  impossible; 
all  that  he  could  give  her  was,  to  her  special  neces 
sity,  useless.  She  had  never  been  able  to  estab- 
[291] 


LINDA    CONDON 

lish  herself  in  his  sympathy;  the  reason  for  that 
lay  in  the  fact  that  she  could  bring  nothing  similar 
in  return. 

The  room — except  for  the  timed  clangor  of  the 
electric  cars,  like  the  measure  of  lost  minutes — 
was  quiet.  The  photograph  of  Bartram  Hallet 
in  cricketing  clothes  had  faded  until  it  was  almost 
indistinguishable.  Soon  the  faint  figure  would 
disappear  entirely,  as  though  the  picture  were 
amenable  to  the  relentless  principle  operating  in 
her. 

The  peace  about  her  finally  lessened  her  acute 
suffering,  stilled  her  heart.  She  told  herself  with 
a  show  of  vigor  that  she  was  a  coward,  a  charge 
that  roused  an  unexpected  activity  of  denial.  She 
discovered  that  cowardice  was  intolerable  to  her. 
What  had  happened,  too,  was  so  far  out  of  her 
hands  that  a  trace  of  philosophical  acceptance, 
recognition,  came  to  her  support.  /The  loveliest 
woman  alive  must  do  the  same,  meet  in  a  looking- 
glass — that  eternal  accompanying  sibyl — her  dis 
aster.  She  rose,  her  lips  firmly  set,  composed 
and  pale,  and  returned  to  the  neglected  flowers  in 
the  library. 

Vigne  entered  and  put  an  affectionate  arm 
about  her  shoulders,  repeating — unconscious  that 
[292] 


LINDA   CONDON 

Linda  had  heard  the  discussion  which  had  given  it 
being — the  conviction  that  her  mother  was  won 
derful,  specially  in  the  black  dinner  dress  with 
the  girdle  of  jet.  With  no  facility  of  expression 
she  gave  her  daughter's  arm  a  quick  light  pressure. 

From  then  she  watched  the  slow  progress  of  age 
with  a  new  realization,  but  an  unabated  distaste 
and,  wherever  it  was  possible,  a  determined  arti 
fice.  )  Arnaud  had  failed  swiftly  in  the  past 
months;  and,  while  she  was  inspecting  the  im 
paired  supports  of  an  arbor  in  the  garden,  he 
came  to  her  with  an  unopened  telegram.  "I 
abhor  these  things,"  he  declared  fretfully;  "they 
are  so  sudden.  Why  don't  people  write  decent 
letters  any  more!  It's  like  the  telephone.  .  .  . 
Good  manners  have  been  ruined." 

She  tore  open  the  envelope,  read  the  brief  line 
within,  and,  a  hand  suddenly  put  out  to  the  arbor, 
sank  on  its  bench.  There  had  been  rain,  but  a 
late  sun  was  again  pouring  over  the  sparkling 
grass,  and  robins  were  singing  with  a  lyrical  clear 
ness.  "What  is  it?"  Arnaud  demanded  anx 
iously,  tremulous  in  the  unsparing  sunlight.  She 
replied : 

"Dodge  died  this  morning." 

His  concern  was  as  much  for  her  as  for  Pley- 
[293] 


LINDA    CONDON 

don's  death.  "I'm  sorry,  Linda,"  his  hand  was 
on  her  shoulder.  "It  is  a  shock  to  you.  A  fine 
man,  a  genius — none  stronger  in  our  day.  When 
you  were  young  and  for  so  long  after.  ...  I  was 
lucky,  Linda,  to  get  you ;  have  you  all  this  while. 
Nothing  in  Pleydon's  life,  not  even  his  success, 
could  have  made  up  for  your  loss." 

She  wondered  dully  if  Dodge  had  missed  her, 
if  Arnaud  Hallet  had  ever  had  her  in  his  posses 
sion.  The  robins  filled  the  immaculate  air  with 
song.  It  was  impossible  that  Dodge,  who  was  so 
imperious  in  his  certainty  that  he  would  never  say 
good-by  to  her,  was  dead. 


[294] 


XLI 

THERE  was  a  revival  of  public  interest  in 
the  destruction  of  Pleydon's  statue  at 
Hesperia,  the  papers  again  printed  ac 
counts  colored  by  a  variety  of  attitudes  unembar 
rassed  by  fact;  and  the  serious  journals  united  in 
a  dignity  of  eminently  safe  praise.  At  first  Linda 
made  an  effort  to  preserve  these;  but  soon  their 
similarity,  her  inability  to  find,  among  sonorous 
periods,  any  trace  of  Dodge's  spirit — in  reality 
she  knew  so  blindingly  much  more  than  the  most 
penetrating  critical  intellect — caused  her  to  leave 
the  reviews  unread.  No  one  else  living  had 
understood  Pleydon ;  and  when  descriptions  of  his 
life  spoke  of  the  austerity  in  his  later  years,  his 
fanatical  aversion  to  women,  Linda  thought  of  the 
brittle  glove  in  the  gilt-lacquer  box. 

Her  own  emotion,  it  seemed  to  her,  was  the 
most  confused  of  all  the  unintelligible  pressures 
that  had  converted  her  life  into  an  enigma.  She 
had  a  distinct  sense  of  overwhelming  loss — of 
something,  Linda  was  obliged  to  add,  she  had 
[295] 


LINDA    CONDON 

never  owned.  However,  she  realized  that  dur 
ing  Pleydon's  life  she  had  dimly  expected  a  happy 
accident  of  explanation;  until  almost  the  last, 
yes — after  she  had  returned  from  that  ultimate 
journey,  she  had  been  conscious  of  the  presence  of 
hope.  The  hope  had  been  for  herself,  created  out 
of  her  constant  baffled  dissatisfaction. 

But  now  the  man  in  whom  solely  she  had  been 
expressed,  the  only  possible  reason  for  her  obsti 
nate  pride,  had  left  her  in  a  world  that,  but  for 
Arnaud's  fondness,  looked  on  her  without  re 
mark.  The  loss  of  her  distinction  had  been 
finally  evident  at  balls,  in  the  dresses  in  which 
Vigne  had  thought  her  so  wonderful,  and  she 
dropped  them.  Here,  she  repeated,  was  when 
affection,  generously  radiated  through  life,  should 
have  reflected  over  her  a  tranquil  and  contented 
joy.  She  had  never  given  it,  and  she  was  with 
out  the  ability  to  receive.  She  admitted  to  her 
self,  with  a  little  annoyed  laugh,  that  her  old 
desire  for  inviolable  charm,  for  the  integrity  of  a 
memorable  slimness,  was  unimpaired.  It  was, 
she  thought,  too  ridiculously  inappropriate  for 
words. 

Yet  it  had  changed  slightly  into  the  recognition 
that  what  so  often  had  been  called  her  beauty  was 
[296] 


LINDA    CONDON 

all  she  now  had  for  sustenance,  all  she  had  ever 
had.  Her  mind  returned  continually  to  Pleydon, 
and — deep  in  the  mystery  of  his  passion — she 
was  suddenly  invaded  by  an  insistent  desire  to  see 
the  monument  at  Cottarsport.  She  spoke  to  Ar- 
naud  at  once  about  this;  and  alone,  through  his 
delicacy  of  perception,  Linda  went  to  Boston  the 
following  day. 

The  further  ride  to  Cottarsport  followed  the 
sea — a  brilliant  serene  blue,  fretted  on  the  land 
ward  side  by  innumerable  bare  promontories, 
hideous  towns  and  factories,  but  bowed  in  a  far 
unbroken  arc  at  the  immaculate  horizon.  She  left 
the  train  for  a  hilly  cluster  of  houses,  gray  and 
low  like  the  rock  everywhere  apparent,  dropping 
to  a  harbor  that  bore  a  company  of  motionless 
boats  with  half-spread  drying  sails. 

The  day  was  at  noon,  and  the  sky,  blue  like  the 
sea,  held,  still  as  the  anchored  schooners,  faint, 
chalky  symmetrical  clouds.  Linda  found  the 
Common  without  guidance;  and  at  once  saw,  on 
its  immovable  base  of  rugged  granite,  the  bronze 
statue  of  Simon  Downige.  It  stood  well  in  ad 
vance  of  what,  evidently,  was  the  court-house,  the 
white  steeple  Dodge  had  described.  She  found 
a  bench  by  a  path  in  the  thin  grass ;  and  there,  her 
[297] 


LINDA    CONDON 

gloved  hands  folded,  at  rest  in  her  lap,  her  gaze 
and  longing  were  lifted  to  the  fixed  aspiration. 

From  where  she  sat  the  seated  figure  was  pro 
jected  against  the  sky;  Simon's  face  was  turned 
toward  the  west;  the  West  that,  for  him,  was  the 
future,  but  which  for  Linda  represented  all  the 
past.  This  conviction  flooded  her  with  unutter 
able  sadness.  A  sense  of  failure  weighed  on  her, 
no  less  heavy  for  the  fact  that  it  was  perpetually 
vague.  Her  thoughts  gathered  about  Dodge  him 
self;  and  she  recalled  the  curious  vividness  of  his 
vision  of  her  as  a  child,  perhaps  ten.  She,  too, 
tried  to  remember  that  time  and  age.  It  was  al 
most  in  her  grasp,  but  her  realization  was  spoiled 
by  absurd  mental  fragments — the  familiar  illu 
sion  of  a  leopard  and  a  rider  with  bright  hair,  a 
forest  with  the  ascending  voices  of  angels,  and  an 
ominous  squat  figure  with  a  slowly  nodding 
plumed  head. 

The  vista  of  a  hotel  returned,  a  fleet  recollection 
of  marble  columns  and  a  wide  red  carpet  .  .  .  the 
white  gleam  and  carbolized  smell  of  a  drug-store 
...  a  thick  magazine  in  a  brown  cover.  These, 
changed  into  emotions  of  mingled  joy  and  pain, 
shifted  in  bright  or  dim  colors  and  sensations. 
There  was  a  slow  heavy  plodding  of  feet,  now 
[298] 


LINDA    CONDON 

above  her  head,  the  passage  of  a  carried  weight; 
and,  in  a  flash  of  perception,  she  knew  it  was  a 
coffin.  She  raised  her  clasped  hands  to  her 
breast,  crying  into  the  sunny  silence,  to  the  figure 
of  Simon  Downige  lost  in  dream: 

"He  died  that  night,  at  the  Boscombe,  after  he 
had  told  me  about  the  meadows  with  silk  tents — " 

Her  memory,  thrilling  with  the  echoed  miracu 
lous  chord  of  the  child  of  ten,  sitting  gravely, 
alone,  among  the  shrill  satins  and  caustic  voices 
of  a  feminine  throng,  was  complete.  She  saw 
herself,  Linda  Condon,  as  objectively  as  Pleydon's 
described  vision:  there  was  a  large  bow  on  her 
straight  black  hair,  and,  from  under  the  bang,  her 
gaze  was  clear  and  wondering.  How  marvelously 
young  she  was!  The  vindictive  curiosity  of  the 
questioning  women,  intent  on  their  rings,  brought 
out  her  eager  defense  of  her  mother,  the  effort  to 
explain  away  the  ugly  fact  that — that  Mr.  Jasper 
was  married. 

She  saw  Linda  descending  the  marble  stairs  to 
the  lower  floor  where  the  games  were  kept  in  a 
somber  corridor,  and  heard  a  voice  halting  her 
irresolute  passage: 

"Hello,  Bellina." 

That  wasn't  her  name,  and  she  corrected  him, 
[299] 


LINDA    CONDON 

waiting  afterward  to  listen  to  a  strange  fairy-like 
tale.  The  solitary,  sick-looking  man,  with  inky 
shadows  under  fixed  eyes,  was  so  actual  that  she 
recaptured  the  pungent  drift  of  his  burning  ciga 
rette.  He  talked  about  love  in  a  bitter  intensity 
that  hurt  her.  Yet,  at  first,  he  had  said  that  she 
was  lovely,  a  touch  of  her  .  .  .  forever  in  the 
memory.  Mostly,  however,  he  spoke  of  a  beauti 
ful  passion.  It  had  largely  vanished,  his  expla 
nation  continued ;  men  had  come  to  worship  other 
things.  Plato  started  it. 

She  recalled  Plato,  as  well,  in  connection  with 
Dodge ;  now,  it  appeared  to  her,  that  remote  name 
had  always  been  at  the  back  of  her  consciousness. 
There  were  other  names,  other  men,  of  an  age  long 
ago  in  Italy.  Their  ideal,  religion,  was  contained 
in  the  adoration  of  a  woman,  but  not  her  body — 
it  was  a  love  of  her  spirit,  the  spirit  their  purity 
of  need  recognized,  perhaps  helped  to  create.  It 
was  a  passion  as  different  as  possible  in  essence 
from  all  she  had  observed  about  her.  It  was 
useless  for  common  purposes,  withheld  from 
Arnaud  Hallet. 

The  man,  seriously  addressing  the  serious  un 
comprehending  interest  of  ten,  proceeded  with  a 
description  of  violins — but  she  had  heard  them 
[300] 


LINDA   CONDON 

through  all  her  life — and  a  parting  that  left  only 
a  white  glove  for  remembrance.  Then  he  had 
repeated  that  line,  in  Italian,  which,  not  long 
back,  her  husband  had  recalled.  The  old  gesture 
toward  the  stars,  the  need  to  escape  fatality — 
how  she  had  suffered  from  that ! 

Yet  it  was  a  service  of  the  body,  a  faith  spiritual 
because,  here,  it  was  never  to  be  won,  never  to  be 
realized  in  warm  embrace.  It  had  no  recognition 
in  flesh,  and  it  was  the  reward  of  no  prayer  or  hu 
mility  or  righteousness.  Only  beauty  knew  and 
possessed  it.  His  image  grew  dim  like  the  blur 
ring  of  his  voice  by  pain  and  the  shadow  of  death. 
Linda's  thoughts  and  longing  turned  again  to 
Dodge;  it  seemed  to  her  that  he  no  more  than  took 
up  the  recital  where  the  other  was  silent. 

Pleydon — was  it  at  Markue's  party  or  later? — 
talking  about  "Homer's  children"  had  meant 
the  creations  of  great  artists,  in  sound  or  color 
or  words  or  form,  through  that  supreme  love 
unrealized  in  other  life.  The  statue  of  Simon 
Downige,  towering  before  her  against  the  sky  and 
above  the  sea,  held  in  immutable  bronze  his  con 
viction.  The  meager  bundle  and  crude  stick  rested 
by  shoes  clogged  with  mud;  Simon's  body  was 
crushed  with  weariness;  but  under  the  sweat-plas- 
[301] 


LINDA   CONDON 

tered  brow  his  gaze  pierced  indomitable  and  un 
dismayed  to  the  vision  of  a  place  of  truth. 

She  was  choked  by  a  sharp  rush  of  joy  at 
Dodge's  accomplishment,  an  entire  understanding 
of  the  beauty  he  had  vainly  explained,  the  death 
less  communication  of  old  splendid  courage,  an 
unshaken  divine  need,  to  succeeding  men  and 
hope.  This  had  been  hers.  She  had  always  felt 
her  presence  in  his  success ;  but,  until  now,  it  had 
belonged  exclusively  to  him.  Dodge  had,  in  his 
love,  absorbed  her,  and  that  resulted  in  the  statues 
the  world  applauded.  She,  Linda  thought,  had 
been  an  element  easily  dismissed.  It  had  hurt 
her  pride  almost  beyond  endurance,  the  pride  that 
took  the  form  of  an  inner  necessity  for  the  survival 
of  her  grace — all  she  had. 

She  had  even  asked  him,  in  a  passing  resent 
ment,  why  he  had  never  directly  modeled  her, 
kept,  with  his  recording  genius,  the  shape  of  her 
features.  She  had  gone  to  him  in  a  blinder  vanity 
for  the  purpose  of  stamping  her  participation  in 
his  triumph  on  the  stupid  insensibility  of  their 
world.  How  incredible!  But  at  last  she  could 
see  that  he  had  preserved  her  spirit,  her  secret  self, 
from  destruction.  He  had  cheated  death  of  her 
fineness.  The  delicate  perfection  of  her  youth 
[302] 


LINDA   CONDON 

would  never  perish,  never  be  dulled  by  old  age  or 
corrupted  in  death.  It  had  inspired  and  entered 
into  Pleydon's  being,  and  he  had  lifted  it  on  the 
pedestal  rising  between  the  sea  and  sky. 

She  was  in  the  Luxembourg,  in  that  statue  of 
Cotton  Mather,  the  somber  flame,  about  which  he 
had  written  with  a  comment  on  the  changing  sub 
jects  of  his  creations.  From  the  moment  when  he 
sat  beside  her  on  the  divan  in  that  room  stifling 
with  incense,  with  the  naked  glimmer  of  women's 
shoulders,,  she  had  been  the  source  of  his  power. 
She  had  been  his  power.  Linda  smiled  quietly, 
in  retrospect,  at  her  years  of  uncertainty,  the  feel 
ing  of  waste,  that  had  robbed  her  of  peace.  How 
complete  her  mystification  had  been!  And,  all 
the  while,  she  had  had  the  thrill  of  delight,  of 
premonition,  born  in  her  through  the  forgotten 
hour  with  the  man  who  had  died. 

The  sun,  moving  in  celestial  space,  shifted  the 
shadow  about  the  base  of  Simon  Downige's  monu 
ment.  The  afternoon  was  advancing.  She  rose 
and  turned,  looking  out  over  the  sea  to  the  horizon 
as  brightly  sharp  as  a  curved  sword.  The  life  of 
Cottarsport,  below  her,  proceeded  in  detached 
figures,  an  occasional  unhurried  passage.  The 
boats  in  the  harbor  were  slumberous.  It  was  time 
[303] 


LINDA    CONDON 

to  go.  She  gazed  again,  for  a  last  view,  at  the 
bronze  seated  figure ;  and  a  word  of  Pleydon's,  but 
rather  it  was  Greek,  wove  its  significance  in  the 
placid  texture  of  her  thoughts.  Its  exact  shape 
evaded  her,  a  difficult  word  to  recall — Kaiharsis, 
the  purging  of  the  heart.  About  her  was  the 
beating  of  the  white  wings  of  a  Victory  sweeping 
her^— a  faded  slender  woman  in  immaculate  gloves 
and  a  small  matchless  hat — into  a  region  without 
despair. 


THE   END 


[304] 


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